Now it’s up to us, says Walter Veltroni to Pio La Torre

“He believed in what he was doing and did what he believed in.” The meaning of the documentary directed by Walter Veltroni on Pio La Torre lies entirely in this portrait produced by Emanuele Macaluso of the regional secretary of the PCI assassinated by the Mafia. A moving and contextualized story in Sicily at the time when the battle against CosaNostra broke out: “because the biggest mafiosos are Sicilians, but also the biggest anti-mafiosos are Sicilians”. As explained by director Giuseppe Tornatore, who offers his point of view on the human, political and social history represented by the assassination of April 30, 1982.

The documentary film released 40 years after his death traces the history and political life of Pio La Torre, Palermo and Sicily at the time under the economic, political and criminal yoke of the Mafia, and of those who, like him, opposed it makes them lose their lives. The screenplay is Monica Zapelli (David di Donatello for L’arminuta and I cento passi), while the production is by Santo Versace, Gianluca Curti for Minerva Pictures with the collaboration of Rai Documentari, Rai Teche and Luce Cinecittà. Now it’s up to us – the story of Pio La Torre will be broadcast in prime time by Rai Documentari soon on Raitre.

Courtesy Press Office

Synopsis of Now It’s Ours – story by Pio La Torre

Walter Veltroni chooses to tell the life of Pio La Torre through the rich archival material including original interviews, archival footage and fiction that serves to recount the years of his childhood and youth. With Davide Amato and Moisè Curia, who give the face to Pio as a child and an adult respectively.
The story is not affected by the alternation of precious testimonies, first of all that which opens the docu-film, of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, who personally paid the price for the fight against the mafia with the death of his brother Piersanti. And he does so as a jurist, citing “the law that also bears his name – n. 646, of 13 September 1982, known as the Rognoni-La Torre law, which introduced for the first time into the Penal Code the provision relating to the offense of “mafia-type association” (art. 416 bis). And he goes on to point out La Torre’s intuition to identify patrimonial measures applicable to the illicit accumulation of capital: “elements that have proven to be essential in striking down and defeating the mafia”.

The tragic premonition in Macaluso a few days after the attack

But not only throughout the 90 minutes in which the story unfolds appears the former President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano, Giuseppe Tornatore, the current chief prosecutor of Palermo Maurizio De Lucia, the former head of the brigade mobile from Palermo Francesco Accordino. As well as the daughter of Rosario Di Salvo – his driver who fell with him in the attack – Tiziana di Salvo. The private side with his wife and two children is also touching.

But that of La Torre remains a political story, a communist story – with the end dedicated to the presence and words of the secretary Enrico Berlinguer – with its prefiguration a few days before the attack: “now it’s ours” by Emanuele Macaluso. Pio La Torre is told in his exemplary existence, entirely dedicated to civil commitment and the fight against the Mafia, which began alongside the workers and continued until the last day, to this instinctive gesture that gave him finds the strength to try to escape from the car under the blows of the killers.