• Golden Globe Awards

The Ploy (Italy)

The Ploy (La Macchinazione) by Italian director David Grieco, recounts the last days of director/poet/writer Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was assassinated on the outskirts of Rome on a November night in 1975. His death is still shrouded in mystery, and the film's authors seems to believe in a conspiracy theory: Pasolini was not savagely murdered by just one person during a sexual encounter, but rather was the victim of a well plotted conspiracy. Veteran actor/singer Massimo Ranieri plays Pasolini;  the music is by  Pink Floyd.In the summer on 1975 the politically engaged and anti- onformist Pasolini is busy editing his last film, the very controversial Salò, o le 120 Giornate di Sodoma. At the same time he's writing Petrolio a journalistic investigation on the collusions between covert political power and oil interests. In those same days Pasolini dates a boy from a poor Roman "borgata" (slum), Pino Pelosi. In the neighborhood an organized crime outfit, the banda della Magliana, is taking the first steps which will eventually extend its criminal empire all over the city. During the night of August 26 the master copy of Salo' is stolen from the Technicolor studios, and a mortal trap is set, as a result of a synergy between small-time criminals, organized crime and obscure political-financial powers that Pasolini was about to unravel.According to The Ploy  on the night of November 2, 1975 Pasolini meets with the criminals who have “abducted” his film. There he finds his violent demise. Was Pelosi really his lone killer? The film gives one answer to a question still hotly debated in Italy. “When the lifeless body of Pasolini was found at the Idroscalo, I was one of the first people at the crime scene together with the forensic experts, and that scene still horrifies me," recalls Grieco, 65, then a good friend of Pasolini's. "La Macchinazione narrates the last three months of Pasolini’s life, and sheds new light on his relationship with Pelosi. The two had been seeing one another for the past four months. And all of this makes Pasolini’s assassination even more grotesque. Different theories about his murder still abounds, and in this film we try to embrace them all and weave them into one simple credible plot, because there is some truth in each of these versions."