DON'T FORGIVE

A young man finds himself gagged and immobilized on a chair, with evident signs of physical torture; with him a girl, also in bad shape and held prisoner. The two are held at gunpoint by their tormentor who, armed with a rifle, will force the woman to commit a fierce and desperate act. What will be the reason for such cruelty? And above all, is the truth what it seems? Very interesting short film presented at the Fantafestival in Rome 2014, conceived by some of the most productive and competent minds of local underground horror. In the direction we find the debutant Samuele Valente, who had already proven his technical skills in the short film "Domino", while the screenplay is entrusted to the active Lorenzo Paviano, author of valid works of the same genre such as "Recording" (S. Rossi), "My Gift to You" (T. Martella) and others. The brutal sequences of these ten minutes directly refer to the classic revenge movie: a man and a woman are prisoners of an individual who will force the girl to kill her friend. The end credits will reveal the rest of the story, or rather, what started it all. More than on physical violence, the film focuses on psychological violence and on the primordial and brutal mechanisms that turn an ordinary man into a sadistic torturer. To emphasize the concept is the photography, curated by Roberto Ricci, which makes the atmosphere leaden and claustrophobic in the first part of the short film, in stark contrast with the final segments that are shown through the narrative device of the flashback. As always, well-made and realistic the special effects curated on this occasion by Costanza Boncompagni, while in the cast (Fabio Morelli, Pietro Trisciuoglio, Sebastiano Sinni) we also find an "old" acquaintance, Lavinia Pini already protagonist of the excellent "Recording". The hope is that this team of young Italian talents can find the visibility and appreciation they deserve: it would certainly be interesting to see them at work in a feature film, but it is known, in the Bel Paese the meaning of the word "meritocracy" is – alas – unknown.