SYNOPSIS

She is the first female politician to become Italy's prime minister, but more importantly, the first far-right leader since 1945 to head a major European democracy. To shed light on the political phenomenon embodied by Giorgia Meloni, we need to retrace her political career and go back to where it all started: a section of the neo-fascist MSI party she joined when she was a young activist. Housed in an ancient ruin on the Colle Oppio near the Colosseum, the section works as a tight-knit group bound by the ideals found in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, a book they hold sacred. This small group of activists known as the Gabbiani, whom she met in the early 1990s, has stood by her since the beginning of her career in politics. They are now her closest advisers, helping her head Italy. This historical investigation tells the story of how this community rose to power, profiling its key members and revealing how political decisions are made, oscillating between normalization of the far right and loyalty to the group’s founding values. The documentary also explores Meloni's dilemma: cooperating with European institutions or aligning with Donald Trump, who sees her as a strategic ally in building a so-called ‘reactionary international’.

Correspondent in Italy for the daily newspaper Libération since 1992, Eric Jozsef also works with Radio Télévision Suisse RTS and various Italian newspapers (La Repubblica, Internazionale, La Stampa, etc.). Author of several books, including Main Basse sur l'Italie, la résistible ascension de Silvio Berlusconi (Ed. Grasset, 2000), he is also the author of the documentaries Gêne(s)ration on the events of the G8 in Genoa (Arte, 2002) and Halting the Mafia (Arte, 2008). President of the Foreign Press Association in Italy from 2001 to 2003, he received the Altiero Spinelli Prize for Journalism in 2018.

AUTHOR / DIRECTOR

CREDITS

Director : Barbara Conforti

Written by Eric Jozsef et Barbara Conforti

DOP : Thibault Delavigne

Editing : Matthieu Goasguen

Music : Zacharie Berdugo

Produced by : Lila Production et ARTE France

International seller : ARTE Distribution

Barbara Conforti is Franco-Italian and lived in Rome before studying journalism in Paris. For 20 years, she worked as a foreign correspondent and produced numerous investigative documentaries for Canal+, ARTE and France TV, notably on mafias and trafficking around the world. In 2009, while working for the CAPA agency, she directed Europe: Lift for the Fascists, a 90-minute film for Spécial Investigation (Canal +), which was a huge success worldwide.