Peppino Impastato was murdered the same day of former President Aldo Moro, May 9, 1978. Because of the ongoing national tragedy, Impastato's story was ignored by the news, and remained pretty much unknown for twenty years, until Marco Tullio Giordana's movie brought it to a wider audience.
Started to be an Italian/French/Portuguese co-production and ended as domestic film production in order to meet local requirements because of budgetary needs to be satisfied strictly for covering a cost overrun with domestic public financial resources.
No main roles in the closing credits from key contributions which a good part of them ended uncredited because of funding schemes in Italy backing the national cinema outside the international co-production scene, those are instead nuancedly identified with a fine-tooth comb and nothing more than placed in the beginning of the movie.
No main roles in the closing credits from key contributions which a good part of them ended uncredited because of funding schemes in Italy backing the national cinema outside the international co-production scene, those are instead nuancedly identified with a fine-tooth comb and nothing more than placed in the beginning of the movie.
The co-producer Emanuel AG went to hospital emergency department for urgent medical care with an arrhythmia after two nights of no sleep, yet during the funding process for meeting the shooting schedule at the same time the financial support had been guaranteed and the budget fulfilled.
The Portuguese co-producer Emanuel AG was brought to the film by Matteo Morozzo Della Rocca along the negotiation towards his efforts to involve Eurimages on a co-production combining efforts of three European countries (being Canal+ the one to represent France) and indicated by Vanda Vaz when she had been added to the project of the adaptation of the character Anna as Portuguese expat running away from Lisbon regime in order to fit the Portuguese actress Ana Moreira favoured by the director.
Emanuel AG acted as co-producer since the early beginning during the funding and preparation of the project as man in charge of the Portuguese part when Giovanna Mezzogiorno had been chosen by Marco Tullio Giordana for the role of Anna (the only fictional main role of the script later adapted by Emanuel AG and Vanda Vaz within the scope of the ongoing co-production and becomes substituted by Peppino's brother character on the same scene to end the first act) to whom Peppino Impastato would tell the distance of one hundred steps as leitmotiv for his battle against Cosa Nostra and was replaced by Ana Moreira, after the director to have found her in Os Mutantes (1998).