A Brutal Epidemic of Domestic Violence Sparks a Country’s Reckoning in ‘Femicidio’
variety.comChristopher Vourlias When Laura Roveri, a 25-year-old Italian woman living in Verona, was stabbed 15 times by her ex-boyfriend in a nightclub, she barely survived to tell her story.
But despite a damning trail of evidence of her attacker’s murderous intent, he claimed his vicious assault never intended to kill her – and received only a seven-year prison sentence as a result.The incident was just one in a wave of brutal attacks and femicides that in recent years have rocked Italy and exposed the devastating consequences of a culture of misogyny and machismo.
Roveri is among the survivors, activists, and victims’ family members who share their stories in “Femicidio,” a documentary written and directed by Nina Maria Paschalidou.
Produced by Paschalidou for Forest Troop and Lorenzo Cioffi for Ladoc, in co-production with Al Jazeera and Sky Italia with the support of the Italian Film Fund and Veneto Fund, the film world premieres this week at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.At the time that Paschalidou first traveled to Italy in 2018, it had the highest number of femicides in the E.U.
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