Roberto Tesconi

Oskar Panizza’s The Council of Love (1895) is a blasphemous play set in 1495, during the first recorded outbreak of syphilis, which Panizza satirically presents as the punishment from Satan for sexually active humans. As a result, Panizza was imprisoned for obscenity. Schroeter alternates scenes from the Panizza’s work with a dramatization of his trial, presenting the play as an expressionist spectacle performed by actors wearing exaggerated makeup who gesture and grimace grotesquely. The film thus forms a bridge between Schroeter’s use of tableaux in his early experiments with the political urgency of his 1980s films. On the eve of the AIDS crisis, Schroeter is presciently worried about disease as an excuse for governmental repression and the oppression of sexuality. - Harvard Film Archive

A Count marries a woman with illness that makes her suffer attacks of vampirism. The Count took flight in the wildest horror, and ran, without any idea where he was going or what he was doing, impelled by the deadliest terror, all about the walks in the park, till he found himself at the door of his own Castle as the day was breaking, bathed in cold perspiration. Involuntarily, without the capability of taking hold of a thought, he dashed up the steps, and went bursting through the passages and into his own bedroom.

Love, business, anxieties, friendships, feuds, and resentments paint the picture of the main story, that of a group of criminals who for nearly fifteen years, from 1977 to 1992, cherished an illusion: that of conquering Rome. The Lebanese, Freddo, Dandi, Patrizia, and Commissioner Scialoja are some of the characters inspired by the true story of the Magliana gang. As stated by Aldo Grasso, the first season of the series gives more space to the crime scene, that is, the criminal exploits of the Magliana gang, while the second season delves deeper into the "behind the scenes" of the crime: thus, the gang's repositioning after a key plot event, and the effects and questions this has provoked in the protagonists' consciences.

L'avvocato delle donne is an Italian television series.