Carlo Giuliani, ragazzo: A counter-hegemonic Italian documentary

Francesca Comencini's documentary Carlo Giuliani, ragazzo deals with one of the darkest pages in recent Italian history. Between 19 and 22 July 2001, during a G8 meeting in Genoa, clashes between protesters and police escalated to a degree that had been unknown in Italy and Europe for 60 years. Two hundred and fifty people were arrested. One thousand and two hundred were injured. One protester, Carlo Giuliani, was shot dead. Politics required that Carlo Giuliani's death was recorded as an accident involving a dangerous extremist; if a different story emerged it is because of the incessant activity of his family and the commitment of many activists, but undoubtedly because of this documentary as well. In this article, I analyse the efficacy of Francesca Comencini's documentary in terms of what Antonio Gramsci called a `war of position', which I value as a fundamental category to assess the importance of contemporary cultural interventions in the complex scenario of western democracies.