Daniele Vicari spent two years interviewing survivors of the incident while researching his screenplay.
Director Daniele Vicari said he told the story of what happened in 'Bolzaneto' barracks through Alma's (Jennifer Ulrich) experience with four-five scenes, but more than two hundred people passed through the barracks and for three-four nights everything happened there, even things that cannot be told, that he would not be able to realize even from a technical point of view. "So through her point of view we told everything that had happened to that person, but for example the scene of Alma who is forced to turn on herself naked happened to about fifteen girls, as the dog-boy happened to about ten boys. There are a number of things that were left out of the story due to a narrative choice, other things that we did not feel like putting in the scene, in fact, the day after the exciting screening of the film in Genoa, the prosecutor of the trial wrote an article entitled "Diaz violent? It was much worse," Vicari said.
Premiered at the 2012 Berlinale Film Festival.