New shake-up at MiC: General Director Cinema and Audiovisual Nicola Borrelli resigns
The backward step communicated after midnight to the minister, who is grappling with the controversy over his non-participation in the Strega Prize
4' min read
4' min read
Another restless night for the Ministry of Culture, another chair jumping. In a terse communiqué issued late in the day, Minister Alessandro Giuli announced that he had 'taken note' of the resignation of Nicola Borrelli, the MiC's historic Director General for Cinema and Audiovisual. The exit from the scene, which came at a time of growing tension, represents yet another shake-up for a strategic but tormented sector, right in the heart of the Roman summer.
Borrelli is leaving after years of a silent but influential reign, in which he had managed the delicate mechanisms of tax credit and relations with a film industry perennially poised between creativity and bureaucracy. His departure, however, inevitably appears as a sign that the boiling point has been reached in the film and audiovisual sector at the Ministry.
The Kaufmann case
.Behind Borrelli's resignation lies the long shadow of the so-called 'Kaufmann case'. Francis Kaufmann, involved in a double murder at Villa Pamphili, is alleged to have benefited - through his Italian partner Marco Perotti of Coevolution srl - from an €860,000 tax credit for the film 'Stars of the Night', which never really took off. The suspicion? That it is yet another 'ghost film'.
The public prosecutor's office has opened an investigation and last week documents were seized in the offices of the General Directorate for Cinema, where Minister Giuli personally appeared with the judicial police. 'No more phantom films', thundered the Culture Minister in Parliament, promising a drastic tightening of controls and a reform of the 'fraud-proof' incentive system.
A farewell that weighs
.Nicola Borrelli is no ordinary official: he is one of the most long-lived and respected figures in the world of Italian cinema. Leaving in silence, in the middle of the night, is a gesture that carries weight. Officially, no polemical statement. Only the minister's thanks and the ritual 'confirmation of esteem'. But, in the sector, many read the move as a result of management pressurised by too many cross-pressures.
