Portobello

Portobello is the first original Italian series produced for HBO Max, directed by Marco Bellocchio and co-written with Stefano Bises, Giordana Mari and Peppe Fiore, based on Lettere a Francesca, a collection of letters written by Enzo Tortora himself during his detention. The series reconstructs the years between 1982 and 1983, when Tortora, played by Fabrizio Gifuni, is at the height of his fame as host of the show Portobello, watched in prime time by roughly 28 million viewers, before a Camorra informant, Giovanni Pandico, names him during an interrogation, setting off a judicial process that leads to his arrest on June 17, 1983, on charges of Camorra association and drug trafficking, charges that would later prove baseless but that upended his public and private life for years. Bellocchio tells this story with the same gaze he has brought to other fraught chapters of Italian history, blending documentary rigor with strong dramatic tension, staging the paradox at the heart of Tortora's story, that of a man accustomed to using television and his own rhetorical skill as tools of success, who suddenly finds those same weapons useless against the judicial and media machine bearing down on him.

Alongside Gifuni, whose performance has been widely singled out as one of the most compelling of the Italian television season, the cast includes Lino Musella, Romana Maggiora Vergano, Barbora Bobulova and Alessandro Preziosi, effectively conveying the climate of suspicion and judicial spectacle of early-1980s Italy. The series, whose first two episodes premiered at the 82nd Venice Film Festival, also reflects on the relationship between media, justice and public opinion, a theme that resonates well beyond the specific case it depicts. Its debut on HBO Max this past February confirmed the warm reception it had received at its festival premiere, with critics naming Portobello among the best Italian productions of the year.