The Diary of an Affiliate

Colour, DIGIBETA
Italy, 2008, 61 min
IP – International premiere
Section: Documentary Films in Competition

Synopsis

The true story of Antonio Perrone, a university student from a respectable bourgeois family, who in the 1980s became a founding member and boss of the mafia organization known as the Sacra Corona Unita (Sacred United Crown). In contrast to Sicily’s Cosa Nostra or Naples’ Camorra, the newly created SCU involved the younger generation. In the as yet "uncontaminated” southern Italian region of Puglia, they perpetrated organized criminal activities as the simplest means of obtaining an easy life. This "hybrid” documentary uses authentic testimony by Perrone’s wife, as well as archive footage, staged sequences, and scenes taken from a feature film recently shot on the same theme. Perrone himself, who spent the first 15 years of his 49-year sentence in solitary confinement, appears in the film via his own words as expressed in the autobiography of his rise and fall.

About the director

Davide Barletti (b. 1972, Lecce), Edoardo Cicchetti (b. 1972, Rome), and Lorenzo Conte (b. 1974, Rome) joined Mattia Mariani in founding the independent production company Fluid Video Crew. Since 1995 they have focused on shooting television programs, short films, and documentaries, including Shquiperia - Albania (1997, doc.), Football Artistes - The True Story of FC Naples (2001, doc.) and Gli ultracorpi della porta accanto (2003, short feature). In 2003, their first feature film, Italian Sud-Est, was included in the program of the Venice festival. In collaboration with renowned Italian producer Amedeo Pagani, they shot Life Sentence (Fine Pena Mai, 2008) starring Claudio Santamarina as Antonio Perrone, one of the founding members of Puglia’s SCU mafia organization.