If there is a story that has left its mark and continues to leave it, it is that of Alfredino. It was June 10, 1981 when Italy stopped on the edge of that well: Alfredino – An Italian story retraces the stages of the story and recounts its most intimate aspects. A miniseries to watch so as not to forget the tragic event imprinted in the memory of a country.
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Alfredino – An Italian story: when the TV series came out
It returned to the Rai schedule three years after its official release. Alfredino – An Italian storyis a miniseries produced by Sky Original in 2021but today, 2024was broadcast in prime time on Rai 1. The story of Alfredino, the child who lost his life at just 6 years old by falling into an artesian well, has been transformed into a series: the story will never be forgotten.
Where to watch the Sky series Alfredino and how many episodes is it?
If we are talking about a miniseries, we have to imagine a few episodes. Alfredino – An Italian storyis in fact made up of suns four episodes, however divided into two episodes. The first two aired on Tuesday 11 June 2024While the last two they will be broadcast Wednesday 12 June. The broadcast is in prime time, the channel is Rai 1, but for those who don’t have the opportunity to see the TV series “live”, there is always the option Rai Play. In fact, on the platform you will have the opportunity to stream or replay all the episodes.
What is the series about? The plot of Alfredino – An Italian story
There plot of the miniseries is inspired by real events that happened in 1981. The protagonists are Franca and Ferdinando Rampi, a happily married couple who lives near Rome, in Vermicino. The two have two sons: one is Alfredo, 6 years old, and the other is Riccardo, who is 2 years old. Of the two brothers, Alfredo is the “weaker” one, at least from a health point of view. The child, in fact, suffers from a cardiac pathology detail that forces him to undergo a very delicate surgery. The family flies to America for the operation, a place they have already visited previously for all the various medical tests.
Not returning home and falling into the well
The plot thickens when a summer evening Alfredino doesn’t come home. Mother Franca, worried, decides to call the police, but it is the firefighters who discover that the little one has fallen into an artesian well: the race against time officially begins. More than 48 hours passed from the moment of discovery: numerous attempts, numerous people involved to try to get Alfredo out of there. A correspondent from TG2, Francesco Viviano, also appears and the images they show the story livewhich ended in the most tragic of ways: the death of Alfredino.
The cast of Alfredino – An Italian story
An exceptional cast in the miniseries dedicated to the news case that shocked Italy. Among the faces of the acting team they stand out Anna Foglietta (Franca Rampi, mother of little Alfredo), Luca Angeletti (Ferdinano Rampi, Alfredino’s father), Francesco Acquaroli (fire brigade commander Elveno Pastorelli) e Vinicio Marchioni (Nando Broglio, the fireman who tried in every way to keep the child company).
The other cast members
To the names already mentioned, central to the narrative, others are obviously added, including:
- Beniamino Marcone (Marco Faggioli);
- Giacomo Ferrara (Maurizio Monteleone);
- Valentina Romani (Laura Bortolani);
- Daniele La Legge (Tullio Bernabei);
- Riccardo De Filippis (Angelo Licheri, the last person who tried to save Alfredo), Massimo Daiuto (President Sandro Pertini);
- Claudio Corinaldesi (Brigadier Giovanni Cortese).
Actors and actresses worked hard to really enter into the lives of those characters, identifying themselves with the story, feeling the same pain, the same hope, the same emptiness after the end.
Where was the miniseries filmed?
Alfredino – An Italian story it was filmed near the capital. The Covid19 pandemic was underway, there were restrictions and there were all the necessary difficulties. The director Marco Pontecorvo has in fact admitted that “the workmanship was particularly difficult: we shot during the pandemic in a very cold and bad weather period. On set we shot with real 4-5 meter wells dug on locationthe rest was built in the studio.”
The true story of Alfredo Rampi, known as “Alfredino”
It was June 10, 1981 And Alfredo Rampilater remembered only as Alfredino, he was only six years old. During a family holiday in Selvotta, a place where his parents had a second home, the child had asked his father to return home alone. Fate, however, cost him dearly: Alfredino fell into a well and that sudden moment began the tragedy that we still know today. The story was followed live on television for the first time; the news was on, the reporters were on site, an entire community gripped in hope. It was 9 in the morning on June 13th when Franca Rampi, Alfredino’s mother, tried to call her son without getting an answer. A video camera, supplied by Rai, is lowered down the well and it is there that, unfortunately, Italy stops: Alfredino was dead. A story that still gives goosebumps today, many controversies, many hypotheses, many “more could have been done”, “it could have been saved”.
What happened: the dynamics of the Vermicino accident
The well into which Alfredino fell was 80 meters deep and with a diameter of 30 cm. The child’s body was stuck around 36 meters deep, before the well narrowed even more. After the first failed attempt to lower a board tied to a rope, the rescuers tried numerous others, all unsuccessful. Broken ropes, stuck boards, attempts to slip into the tunnel ended in vain: a race against time that is difficult to manage. Even the attempt to dig a tunnel parallel to the well was of no avail: “The vibrations of the drill made Alfredino slide even further down”, said Tullio Bernabei 40 years after the event.
The attempt by Angelo Licheri, the “spider man” of the story
Among the great rescue attempts is that of Angelo Licheri. The man, who died in 2021, said he wanted to lower himself into the well and touched Alfredino’s hands and made him open his eyes. Even in that case the outcome was negative: the carabiner broke, the child’s wrist also broke and the slide further and further down made the situation worse. Another attempt vanished into thin air and a child who was no longer there. Between one controversy and another (so much spectacularization of pain), Alfredino’s story will and must always be remembered, so that incidents like this never happen again.
