24/10/2024 - Pippo Mezzapesa’s miniseries about the murder of Sarah Scazzi is an example of how a horrible true crime story can be told without morbidity and by delving into the psychology of the characters

There are places that remain imprinted in the collective memory for the heinous crimes that were committed there, places that, with time, have become themselves synonymous with murder: New Ligure, Cogne, Erba… Simply mentioning them makes you think about a girl killing her parents, a mother murdering her little boy, a massacre between neighbours. One of these places is Avetrana, a town in Apulia where in the summer of 2010, a 15-year-old girl, Sarah Scazzi, was murdered by her cousin (out of jealousy) and her aunt, therefore by the people she loved most, and was then thrown down a well in the middle of the countryside by her uncle. This is what emerges from a third-instance judgement, and it is to this procedural truth that This Is Not Hollywood [+see also:
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interview: Pippo Mezzapesa
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Avetrana is also the place in which an unprecedented media circus takes places around this terrible news story, with TV channels positioned day and night in front of the house of horrors from which Sarah never came out alive, and with an army of journalists on the hunt for scoops and morbid details on every street of the village. Finally, the chilling announcement that the body of the little girl has been found is made, live on TV, directly to her mother who at that moment was the guest of a well-known TV show about missing persons. This is also what the series is about: the macabre show that plays on air at all hours of the day and to which lends herself, out of pure vanity, Sarah’s murderous cousin Sabina Misseri (played by extraordinary newcomer Giulia Perulli, who put on more than 20 kgs for the part), before the noose closes around her and her mother Cosima Misseri (the equally exceptional Vanessa Scalera, transformed and magnified by prosthetic makeup). Meanwhile, “uncle Michele” (Paolo De Vita) insisted, under pressure from the two women, on taking all the responsibility for the crime upon himself, but continuously got confused and repeatedly retracted his version of the story.

The four episodes of This Is Not Hollywood each present a different point of view on the story. We begin with the most difficult one to reconstruct, that of the victim, played with almost hypnotic grace by the young Federica Sala. Those of her cousin Sabrina, her uncle Michele and her aunt Cosima follow. But it isn’t the same segment of the story that is revisited every time; instead, each episode continues the delivery of the facts through a different prism: Sarah’s radiance, Sabrina’s frustration, Michele’s fear of God, Cosima’s conflict. A mosaic of stomach-churning human misery, pettiness and weaknesses emerges from which no one is saved, except little Sarah. The tone is respectful, the show avoids representing the unrepresentable (the crime itself), and the psychology of the characters is deep. Lastly, the cast is amazing: also worth mentioning is Imma Villa playing Sarah’s mother, Giancarlo Commare as the beautiful Ivano, who is the object of contention between the two cousins, and Anna Ferzetti as the journalist Daniela; casting director Francesca Borromeo is to be thanked for this.

This Is Not Hollywood was produced by Matteo Rovere for Groenlandia. The series’ broadcast, planned for 25 October exclusively on Disney+ in Italy and Europe, and on Hulu in the United States, has been momentarily suspended, since the Taranto court has accepted the urgent appeal presented by the Avetrana mayor, Antonio Iazzi, who in the last few days asked for “the rectification of the name” of the TV series and its “immediate suspension”. For the municipality’s lawyers, it appears “essential to view it in advance in order to ascertain whether the association of the name of the town with this cinematic adaptation has a defamatory effect”. The judge has set the date of 5 November for the hearing of the parties.

(Translated from Italian)