The 1968–69 student-led resistance movement against Italy’s fossilized traditions eventually developed into acts of terrorism, culminating on 12 December 1969, when 17 people were killed and a further 88 injured in a bomb attack at the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura in Milan. The investigation of the horrific case was entrusted to police captain Luigi Calabresi. He and his superiors were convinced that, as in previous attacks, anarchists were behind the carnage. Yet further developments indicated that the trail led elsewhere. The background to the massacre on Piazza Fontana was so complex that it proved ideal material for a novel. The central character is naturally the policeman, whose life was severely marked by the case thereafter. The filmmakers didn’t have to romanticize: the reality was so bizarre that it was more a case of having to condense the facts, rather than invent any part of the plot. The result is a crime drama which also gives us a faithful image of Italy at that time.
