Rosso Pompeiano

The defense, by the occupants of the social center “Giardino Liberato,” in the Mater Dei district of Naples, against a possible eviction by law enforcement.

Between assemblies, escapes, and encounters, Oreste Scalzone will arrive at the center. First through reflection, and then through a desire—initially unspoken but increasingly determined—to resist and continue the struggle, he will give a decisive impulse to the defense of that place, a true stronghold of freedom and creativity in the service of the community.

Screenings and schedule

17 MARZO 2026 - 21:00

Premiere NAPOLI

Casa Cinema via Cisterna dell’Olio 46/49

21 & 22 MARZO 2026 - 17:00

NAPOLI

Casa Cinema via Cisterna dell’Olio 46/49

23 MARZO 2026 - 21:00

ROMA

Cinema Farnese- Campo de’ Fiori 56,

con la presenza della regista e dei produttori

Film Information

Director’s presentation

Director’s statement

"I chose to set my film in a social center, the Giardino Liberato in Materdei, Naples — a political place par excellence, born in the 1970s and carried through generations.

A space where the tension between inheritance and future becomes tangible.

Here, young people have no weapon other than collective discussion, critical practice, and the will to remain.

Oreste Scalzone plays Emiliano Antes, whose presence is intermittent, almost spectral: an embodied presence confronting a collective of young people who are still politically uncertain and in formation, discovering activism as an awakening.

I met Oreste Scalzone in Paris during a social movement about ten years ago. His small, almost Chaplinesque figure and the radical coherence of his political trajectory led me to question his presence in cinema.

After a first cameo in En attendant les barbares, I decided to entrust him with the heart of my first feature film. Rosso Pompeiano is a political film infused with a poetic realism.

It is a gesture of trust toward those places where, despite everything, people continue to breathe: spaces of culture, memory and possibility.

The film emerges from a simple and urgent question: is it possible to become political subjects without the memory of the struggles that came before us?"

Prescillia Martin

Prescillia Martin Biography

French actress, director, and screenwriter Prescillia Martin alternates between making her own films and working as an actress.

She collaborated with Mimmo Calopresti on the feature film Uno per tutti (2015) and with Vincent Macaigne on the French TV film Dom Juan et Sganarelle.

She appeared in the short film Ultima Chiamata (2017) by Massimo Latini, alongside Abel Ferrara and Mimmo Calopresti, and more recently in the French film Le Procès Goldman (2023) by Cédric Kahn.

About ten years ago, she met Oreste Scalzone. His small, almost Chaplinesque figure and the radical coherence of his political trajectory inspired her to include a cameo in her first self-produced feature, En attendant les barbares (2016).

Her debut film already explored the question of generational transmission in politics and, in a way, served as a prelude to her first professional feature, Rosso Pompeiano.

Oreste Scalzone Biography

Oreste Scalzone was born on January 26, 1947, in Terni. At just thirteen, he joined the FGCI, the Federation of Young Italian Communists.

In the following years, he co-founded the extra-parliamentary political organization Potere Operaio with Franco Piperno and Toni Negri, and later joined Autonomia Operaia.

In 1968, he was among the first to suffer a fascist attack at the law faculty. Since then, he has remained a consistently politically engaged figure, committed to his ideas and a materialist vision of politics.

During the years of repression, he left Italy and fled to France aboard actor Gian Maria Volonté’s sailboat. He later stated that he had helped expatriate those responsible for the death of the Mattei brothers, who were killed in the Primavalle fire.

In 1988, he was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for participation in a subversive association. After living in France for many years to avoid detention, he returned to Italy when the crime went into statute of limitations.

In 2016, he participated in France in the Nuit Debout movement and the mobilizations against the Loi Travail, between March and September. Although a central figure in Italian radical movements, Scalzone has always opposed armed struggle. This was part of neither the political project of Potere Operaio nor that of Autonomia Operaia.

The idea was rather that of an insurrection as a political and social movement, not clandestine or violent secret actions like those of the Red Brigades.

This position was shared with Toni Negri, his lifelong comrade in struggle and friend during exile in France.

In addition to his political activity, Scalzone has appeared in several films and documentaries. After a brief cameo in En attendant les barbares by Prescillia Martin, he appeared in the documentaries Dimenticanza militanza by Patrizio Partino (2019), Ora e sempre riprendiamoci la vita by Silvano Agosti (2018), and Addio Lugano bella by Francesca Solari (2000).

Production Notes

"Why make the film Rosso Pompeiano?

Out of a sense of struggle and growth.

To show a story from inside a social center illustrates how self-management and the freedom to create are themselves forms of struggle and resistance.

Did this need a voice? For me, yes.

Vital and creative community spaces are medicine for the soul, and that is why I decided to produce and distribute this film.

It is an Italy-France co-production and also features two exceptional talents:

the actress Iaia Forte and Oreste Scalzone, a figure of significant political battles."

Massimo Spano

Synopsis

After the death of Ciro, his former comrade in struggle, Emiliano returns to Naples after living in France for forty years, where he had fled to avoid prison.

In a building that belonged to Ciro, in the Materdei district, his niece Ornella and the young Cosimo have created a self-managed space open to precarious workers, migrants, and artists.

Their dream, however, seems threatened by the eviction order from Mattia, Ornella’s father, a man with very different political views.

Emiliano then decides to stay in Naples to support the struggle of Ornella, Cosimo, and all the other occupants.