85m; Italy

Director: Paolo Benvenuti

Cast: Antonio Catania, David Coco and Sergio Graziani

Synopsis (Best of Sicily Magazine): The film recounts the story of the “Massacre of Ginestra” of May 1947. This was the murder by gunfire of eleven Communists during a political march at rural Portella della Ginestra, outside the Sicilian town of Piana degli Albanesi. Not only were people killed, but nearly thirty were injured. The crime, historically blamed on the band of the charismatic bandit Salvatore Giuliano, was previously depicted in Michael Cimino’s film The Sicilian, starring Christopher Lambert and John Turturro, which portrayed the rustic renegade as a Sicilian Robin Hood. The real Giuliano was killed under mysterious circumstances and a number of alleged accomplices arrested, but officially the mass murder was never solved. Mafia complicity has always been claimed, because organised crime opposed the Communist Party while supporting the Christian Democrats, who effectively controlled Italian politics for forty years. Obviously, the case was politically charged and hotly controversial. – http://www.bestofsicily.com/mag/art103.htm