Country: Italy
Year: 2003
Duration: 75


Danilo Coppe is an action man: he is the top expert in using dynamite for demolitions in Italy. One day he gets the proposal to demolish 8 big buildings, built illegally on the shoreline: they are the so-called "Towers of Coppola village", the symbol of the worst "eco-monster" in Europe. An entire holiday resort, built on public land between the 60's and the 90's, eluding each law on landscape and where even the school and the carabinieri precinct are illegal. An endless story of trials and destruction of the territory, of mafia collusions and political complicity. And for the first time in his career, Danilo Coppe gets stopped, he gets involved in a complex and obscure process, and after two years of inspections, meetings, controls and phone calls, he can only demolish one of the eight towers.

Biography

film director

Giovanni Piperno

(Rome, 1964) worked as a photographer and assistant cameraman in movies and commercials; in 1997, he began making TV programs and documentaries. His films include L’esplosione, which won the Doc competition at the 2003 TFF and was nominated for a David di Donatello; This Is My Sister, which won the Avanti! award at the 2006 TFF; and Cimap! Centoitalianimattiapechino, which was presented at Locarno and won the 2009 Libero Bizzarri award. Il pezzo mancante (2010), about the Agnelli family, won the Cinema Doc competition at the TFF, while his next movie Le cose belle (2012), co-directed with Agostino Ferrente, participated at the Venice Film Festival and later won twenty-five national and international awards. The collective film 9x10 novanta (2014), produced by the Istituto Luce for its ninetieth anniversary, participated at the Giornate degli Autori in Venice and that same year he collaborated with Antonietta De Lillo on the documentary Let’s Go, out-of-competition at the 2014 TFF. In 2015, he presented the short films Se avessi le parole and Quasi eroi at the Rome Film Fest; this latter movie also won the Silver Ribbon for best short film. In 2017, he made the video installation L’energia degli italiani for the Italian pavilion at the Expo in Astana, Kazakhstan, and in 2018, the web series Ogni santo 23. In 2020, he presented the short Come si scrive ti amo in coreano in Rome and that same year he taught documentary directing at the Gian Maria Volonté Film School. In 2021 he presented Cipria.

FILMOGRAFIA

Ebrei in Sudafrica (coregia Laura Muscardin, cm, doc, 1992), Black Taxi (coregia Laura Muscardin, cm, 1993), Mosè a Bombay (coregia Laura Muscardin, cm, doc, 1994), Bananine unipolari (cm, doc, 1997), Il mio nome è Nico Cirasola (mm, doc, 1998), Intervista a mia madre (coregia Agostino Ferrente, mm, doc, 1999), Verdi Suprême (cm, doc, 2002), L’esplosione (doc, 2003), This Is My Sister (mm, doc, 2006), Cimap! Centoitalianimattiapechino (doc, 2008), La danza delle api (coregia Giulio Cederna, mm, doc), Il pezzo mancante (doc, 2010), Le cose belle (coregia Agostino Ferrente, doc, 2012), Miracolo italiano (ep. di 9x10 novanta, 2014), Chiedi a papà (serie tv, doc, 2015), Almost Heroes (cm, 2015), Viale Giorgio Morandi (2017), Lamiya (cm, 2019), Voci a domicilio (cm, 2019), Come si scrive ti amo in coreano (cm, 2019), Cipria (2021), Sedici millimetri alla rivoluzione (doc, 2023).

Cast

& Credits

Regia, soggetto, sceneggiatura, fotografia/Director, story, screenplay, director of photography: Giovanni Piperno
Montaggio/Film editor: Marco Spoletini
Musica/Music: Mario Tronco per Piccola Orchestra Avion Travel
Suono/Sound: Marco Fiumara, Max Gobiet
Produttore/Producer: Carlo Cresto-Dina
Produzione, distribuzione/Production, distribution: Fandango

TFF

prizes

DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION 2003

Best Italian Documentary

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