The Brigand

Young Michele grows up in a poor village in Calabria: during the fascist era, he is accused of murder and arrested, but escapes, flees to the mountains, and becomes an outlaw and a partisan. After the war, he leads the peasants in the occupation of uncultivated land, but is persecuted and forced to flee once again. A companion film to Francesco Rosi’s better-known Salvatore Giuliano, shot in the same year: an epic fresco inspired by the models of Soviet cinema and neorealism, surprising for a director known above all for elegant and delicate films. Cut by the production company and then censored to remove the most violent or politically sensitive scenes, it was not seen in its original version until 2012, when a copy was rediscovered in the Venice Biennale archives. Copy from the CSC-Cineteca Nazionale.