Released on the eve of the 2013 G8 Summit, Diaz: Don’t Clean Up This Blood brings to light a savage and scandalous act of violence and corruption by the Italian police, government and courts that has skated far to easily beneath the public conscious.
While the focus is on the shocking events of a police raid on Genoa’s Diaz school, a makeshift camping centre and station for members of the media, medical and support workers, the film first sets the scene of unrest and demonstration against the activities of the G8. But they’re scenes that don’t in any way come to justify what that followed.
With the police deeming the Diaz the nerve centre of the “black bloc” activists, they give it all they’ve got in a terrifying raid. Though none of the inhabitants put up any sort of resistance, the Carabiniere surge the building, beating anyone and everyone to within an inch of their lives. Putting three, including a journalist, into a coma and seriously injuring another 93 with no-one left unscathed, none of those arrested were ever found guilty of wrong-doing. The senseless command of officers who ordered the barbaric violence instead was the only wrongdoing.
Brutal, shocking and powerful in all the right ways, Diaz: Don’t Clean Up This Blood is a visceral flood, pushing the limits to get across the extreme nature of the police brutality. And you’ll come out even more shocked how little the events are talked about in the modern day.
The direction is very tight, with superb acting across the board from what for most people will be an entire cast of unknowns. I just hope people will take notice because with the Genoa Carabiniere going largely unpunished, even after the plan ting of Molotov cocktails and a fake stabbing were uncovered, and a public inquiry shutdown by the Italian government, these are atrocities that should be given justice at long last.