Elio Germano won the David di Donatello for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Laf building.
OUR REVIEW:
1997. Yet another death at work has just occurred at the ILVA in Taranto, but Caterino Lamanna, a worker assigned to labor in the steel industry, is ready to blame it on the unions. Caterino is a maverick who thinks about his imminent marriage with the young Albanian Anna and minds his own business, until Giancarlo Basile, director of ILVA, recruits him to “take a tour and tell him what’s happening” in the factory, and reports in particular the activities of the trade unionist Renato Morra, who inflames the workers’ minds and pushes them to rebellion. Basile offers Lamanna the promotion to team leader and the company car, but Caterino asks to be sent to the Palazzina Laf thinking that it is a place of privilege reserved for a select few. In reality it is a disused building, a cross between an Indian reservation, a mental hospital and a prison, where the qualified employees who have made the wave are locked up during working hours, and who are therefore invited to resign or accept a demoted position and inconsistent with their preparation.
Laf building marks the directorial debut of actor Michele Riondino, and it is a brilliant debut, which brings with it not only in-depth knowledge of the ignoble history of ILVA and its repercussions on the Taranto area (where Riondino was born and raised), but also the legacy of much cinema, from Fantozzi’s grotesque saga to the dazed alienation of The black sheep by Ascanio Celestini, Brazil by Terry Gilliam and Tony Manero by Pablo Larrain.
