Diaz: Don't Clean Up This Blood

‘Diaz: Don’t Clean Up This Blood’ is a film directed by Daniele Vicari and produced by Domenici Procacci, whose past efforts include ‘Gomorrah’ and is based upon real events that occurred in the aftermath of the 2001 G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy. ‘Diaz’ tells the story of how police, in an attempt to crack down on subversive activists, launched a nocturnal assault on a school being used as a hostel. The film presents a gripping account of what took place from the perspective of multiple witnesses, victims and perpetrators.

Hoards of faceless police officers in riot gear burst into the school to find, among the array of ‘commie scum’, unarmed youngsters, innocent women, media journalists and one poor old man who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The police are swift in their response – beating every resident they come across indiscriminately in one of the most shocking depictions of authoritarian barbarity ever shown on screen. Words fail to convey how outrageous the raid at the Armando Diaz School appears in the film. It is a horror compounded by the fact that the script was based on judicial reports and eyewitness testimonies of an event that genuinely happened.

Despite being set in an Italian city prior to 9/11, the film’s themes are strangely relevant to contemporary fears for our own civil liberties in an age of Guantanamo Bay , terrorism and rising public dissatisfaction with national governments. In ‘Diaz’ the police retreat into self-denial about their abuses of power through the falsifying of evidence and indulge in hollow justifications for their unscrupulous actions. Guilty anarchists escape the violence, while the innocent suffer, calling into question the legitimacy of the supposed guardians of society. How can justice be delivered when the line between the state and terrorism, order and chaos is rendered imperceptible – drowned in the blood of a hundred dripping nightsticks? ‘Diaz’ does not produce an exact answer to this question but sets the foundations for a heavy debate.

Those who might claim Vicari is exploiting the historical incident for his own leftist propaganda should remind themselves that corruption has been and remains a cancer within the body of Italian politics. In ‘Diaz’ we see how the responsibility for the crimes committed permeates through the whole hierarchy of command. The audience occasionally get a glimpse of the idyllic Genoan setting, which presents a jarring contrast to the black heart of fascist oppression the film depicts. The text at the conclusion of ‘Diaz’ reminds us that although the film may be over, the legal battles to obtain justice for the wrongs committed still rage on in the courtrooms, tabloids and in documentaries. It is no coincidence that the film’s UK release is scheduled for a week in advance of the G8 Summit taking place in Northern Ireland this year.

The bond between many of the unfortunate activists provides a bittersweet beacon of light in the dark. A gesture of solidarity between two demonstrators beaten within an inch of their lives and unceremoniously dumped upon each other in a pile of bodies is shocking and yet poignant at the same time. This is the primary success of ‘Diaz’ as emotive cinema. Its show of excessive force and police brutality stir anger within the viewer but paradoxically the suffering on display also has the power to conjure up feelings of empathy towards the innocent victims of this atrocity. Vicari offers a deeply emotional reminder of the nature of humanity at its worst and yet most life-affirming.