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Contains strong language
Viva Zapatero! is an eye-opening documentary about the state of political satire in writer/director Sabina Guzzanti's native Italy. While the genre is well developed in the UK, from Punch and Private Eye to Spitting Image and Rory Bremner (who appears in Guzzanti's film), it was clearly an anathema to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's regime, as Guzzanti dramatically discovered in 2003.
In November of that year the broadcaster RAI aired the first of a series of five comedy programmes under the title RAIot (pronounced riot). It starred a heavily made-up Guzzanti sending up the glorious leader in a manner that British audiences would have been well accustomed to. Despite being buried in the schedule the show drew a record 25% audience share for the channel. Berlusconi's television group Mediaset promptly sued RAI for defamation, to the tune of 20 million euros, and the remaining shows were scrapped.
"A SERIES OF INTERVIEWS WITH LEADING FIGURES"
Consisting of a series of interviews with leading journalists, media figures, and politicians, Viva Zapatero! shows how Berlusconi compromised democracy and freedom of speech through his stranglehold over the media. What's remarkable is the way in which Guzzanti was immediately ostracised by both left- and right-wing groups, despite a judge ruling that Mediaset's case was without basis. (And this all occurred in the heart of Europe, not some war-torn outpost on the 'Axis Of Evil'). Viva Zapatero is unlikely to receive anything like the level of attention received by Michael Moore's Oscar-winning Fahrenheit 9/11, but this biting documentary is no less deserving.
