Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
On July 19–21, 2001, over 200,000 people took to the streets of Genoa to protest against the ongoing G8 summit. Anti-globalization activists clashed with the police, with 23-year-old protester Carlo Giuliani shot dead after confronting a police vehicle. In the aftermath, the police organized a night raid on the Diaz high school, where around a hundred people between unarmed protesters—mostly students—and independent reporters who documented the police brutality during the protests had took shelter. What happened next was called by Amnesty International "the most serious breach of civil liberties in a democratic Western country since World War II."
Diaz reconstructs one of modern Europe's most disturbing episodes of state violence with unflinching honesty and a documentary-like urgency that sets it apart. Its Novelty score is high because few Western films have tackled this kind of institutional brutality with such raw, procedural authenticity — it refuses both melodrama and easy catharsis. The multi-character ensemble structure (reminiscent of Altman but applied to political horror) gives it a distinctive voice. Plot is solid but somewhat fragmented across its many threads, making emotional investment uneven. Acting is committed and naturalistic across the large cast without any single standout performance elevating it further. Cinematography is gritty and handheld in ways that serve the material but don't transcend the docudrama aesthetic. The ending, while deliberately unresolved and appropriately sobering (reflecting the real-world failure of justice), lands with weight but not quite the formal power that would push it to exceptional.