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Bookmark this pageViva Zapatero! (2005)
Director: Sabina Guzzanti
Movie review
From Time Out London
This latest campaigning documentary on the illiberal activities of Silvio Berlusconi – twice Italian prime minister and controller of his country’s second most powerful conglomerate, Fininvest – condemns the media mogul for the greatest crime of all: the little guy can’t take a joke. Comedian, impersonator and self-proclaimed ‘buffoon’ Guzzanti – Italy’s answer to Rory Bremner (who features here, doing his Tony Blair number) – had her satire show, ‘RAIot’, swiftly taken off the air by her RAI (Italy’s BBC) bosses. A landmark ruling suggested satire could be libellous; her superiors got cold feet and ditched her programme for being ‘unfunny’.Guzzanti’s lively documentary traces her enquiry into this ‘act of censorship’. In her own country, she interviews TV execs, academics, ‘betrayers’ from the previous centre-left coalition (who, she claims, paved the way for Berlusconi’s unprecedented corporate control), eminent journalists sacked by Signor B and fellow satirists (including Dario Fo); further afield (notably in France) she talks to other defenestrated hacks, politicos and media types. The result is an entertaining and pertinent, if egocentric, diatribe with some funny sketch material.
Author: Wally Hammond
Time Out London Issue 1864: July 19-26 2006
Cast & crew
Director: Sabina Guzzanti
Producer: Sabina Guzzanti, Andrea Occhipinti
With: Sabina Guzzanti, Rory Bremner, Paolo Rossi
Genre(s): Documentaries
Duration: 80 mins
UK Release: Jul 21 2006
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