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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.