Italian sues Fanny Ardant
2007-08-29 12:01
Venice - The son of a former Italian
policeman killed by the Red Brigades said on Tuesday he was
suing actress Fanny Ardant, who is due to attend this week's
Venice film festival, for calling the founder of the guerrilla
group her "hero".
Piero Mazzola told Reuters he had filed suit against the
French actress on grounds that she had praised a murderer.
In
Italy it is illegal to praise someone for committing a crime.
The 58-year-old star sparked an angry response in Italy last
week when she told an Italian magazine she admired jailed
guerrilla Renato Curcio because, unlike leaders of the 1968
Paris student revolt, he did not abandon leftist ideals.
"For me Renato Curcio is a hero. I always considered the Red
Brigades phenomenon to be very moving and passionate," she told
the magazine "A" in an interview, adding that Curcio "didn't become a businessman" like French leftists of his generation.
'Stay away from festival'
Conservative politicians in Italy called for Ardant, former
partner of director Francois Truffaut, to stay away from the
film festival, which opens on Wednesday and where her latest
film is premiering.
Ardant has since offered a contrite apology in an interview
with Italian state television, saying she was sorry to have
"caused suffering to people who have already suffered".
But Mazzola, a lawyer whose father was gunned down with a
colleague near Venice in 1974 - one of the Red Brigades' first
victims - said her apologies were not enough.
"Curcio was convicted for the killing my father, among other
crimes. So, together with my family, I have filed legal
proceedings against Ardant because she is praising a murderer,"
Mazzola said.
"I just can't see how killing people can be called heroism,"
he said.
"She may see the Red Brigades as passionate while
sipping champagne in Paris, but for us it's very different."
Trip to Venice cancelled?
Italian media said Ardant was thinking of cancelling her
trip to Venice out of fear that the controversy would overshadow
the release of L'Ora di Punta, by Italian director Vincenzo
Marra, whose premiere is scheduled for September 6.
"Let her come to Venice and realise that not so long ago
this land was soaking with blood. And I don't mean the tomato
sauce they use in movies, I mean real blood," Mazzola said.
Marco Mueller, the director of the festival, said it was up
to Ardant to decide whether to come.
"We are obviously ready to welcome her, but that does not
mean that we agree with her views about some of the most tragic
events of our recent past," Mueller told Reuters.
Curcio was a founder of the Marxist urban guerrilla group
and was jailed for a series of killings and kidnappings starting
in 1970 that became known as the "years of lead".
The band's most notorious act was the kidnap and murder of
Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro in 1978.