Diaz – Don’t clean up this blood is a docu-film that narrates the events that took place around the 27th G8 summit in Genoa on July 21st, 2001. In the days leading up to this, around 200,000 anti-globalisation protesters from all over Europe had gathered in the city to demonstrate against the one-sided power of the authorities to decide over the lives of millions of people. Protests went on for few days, and police’s repression and brutality quickly degenerated, until it reached its peak with the murder of Carlo Giuliani, a 17 year old student who was shot dead by the policeman Mario Placanica. 

Following this incident, more protesters joined the demonstrations, as well as journalists and reporters. The city hall provided public spaces as dormitory for the activists and the media. Among these there was the Diaz, a school that was used as a sleeping quarter and a centre for those providing media, medical, and legal support work. The authorities, determined to justify their violence in a foolish search for “black-blocs”, gave a free hand to the anti-riot police in the matter of repression. The Police superintendent organized a night-time raid upon the Diaz school, where were gathered 93 people from different nationalities, ages and backgrounds. The events that took place in that night have been condemned by Amnesty International as “the most serious suspension of the democratic rights in a Western country since the Second World War”. Yet, all the cops involved have been acquitted for prescription of crime and are still working as police officers. 

The film reconstructs what happened with brutal and shocking realism, taking the perspective of different people who were in Genoa at the time, and shows their intertwined experiences. 

The film is in Italian with English subtitles.