An investigative documentary titled “All the Evil in the World” — about the murder of leftist Italian graduate student Giulio Regeni, who in 2016 was tortured to death in Cairo, allegedly by Egypt’s secret police — is sparking outrage in Italy over the fact that it has been denied government funding by a commission appointed by the country’s right-wing government.
The doc, directed by Simone Manetti and produced by Italy’s Ganesh productions and Domenico Procacci‘s Fandango, reconstructs the still ongoing quest for judicial truth about the kidnapping, torture and murder of Regeni. Regeni was in Cairo to do research for his doctorate at Cambridge on Egypt’s independent labor unions that operate outside the Egyptian state-controlled trade union federation. His brutalized body was found in a gutter on the side of the Cairo-Alexandria highway on Feb. 3, 2016.
Reports suggest Regeni was under surveillance in Egypt before his death and suspected of being a spy. Egyptian officials have repeatedly denied having had a hand in Regeni’s death.
In parliament on Thursday, Italy’s culture minister Alessandro Giuli rejected accusations of government interference, or even censorship, being prompted by the commission’s recent failure to provide retro-active support for the completed doc. Three members of the government-appointed commission have also resigned in protest.
“I disagree with the selection committee’s decision on the documentary film about Regeni, both morally and in ideological terms,” Giuli said, responding to a question from the opposition Democratic Party about why funding support for the doc was nixed.
Meanwhile, undersecretary for culture Lucia Borgonzoni, who oversees the country’s cinema department, has said she expects members of the government-appointed commission that denied funding for the film to stand down.
“All the Evil in the World” — the title of which is a quote from Regeni’s mother when she saw the marks on her son’s body in a Cairo morgue — tells the murdered student’s story from the point of view of his parents, Claudio Regeni and Paola Deffendi, “who challenged the military dictatorship of [Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi] to uncover the truth,” as the synopsis puts it.
The doc includes an exclusive interview with Alessandra Ballerini, the lawyer who assisted the Regeni family in their long legal battle that has led to a trial being held in Italy of four Egyptian national security agents, without the defendants being physically present. The trial, which started in 2024, is expected to reach a verdict later this year.
Controversy in the media over denied public funds for “All the Evil in the World” has now prompted the doc to be re-released by Fandango after its event outing in Italian cinemas in early February. Fandango and indie exhibitor Circuito Cinema is releasing the doc on 60 screens in Italy this weekend.
“Putting the film back in cinemas is the best response to those who are hellbent on this documentary becoming a one-sided [political] battle,” Fandango chief Procacci said in a statement.
The doc, which is being sold by Fandango Sales, is now also set to screen in more than 70 Italian universities and, on May 5, will get a special screening at the European Parliament in Brussels.
