Adagio 2023

The film unfolds over a harrowing 24 hours in Rome, a city choking under fires and blackouts that bend the day into a tense, smoke-laden maze. Manuel, a 16-year-old boy, slips into a gay sex party where alcohol and drugs flow freely and are openly used. His mission is to film and implicate a minister present there for exploitation of child prostitution. Yet as he records, he discovers the building is wired with hidden cameras and is suddenly confronted with the chilling realization that he himself has just been filmed snorting cocaine. Real fear drives him to run, lungs burning and nerves jangling.

The person who gave him the assignment is Vasco, a corrupt policeman who trades in compromising material for money on behalf of high-ranking figures. After Manuel’s escape, Vasco launches a ruthless manhunt, turning the hunt into a city-wide chase through the smoke and sparks of the night.

Manuel seeks shelter with Polniuman, an old friend of his father Daytona and, like Daytona, a former member of the Magliana gang. The man, now blind, agrees to help the boy and sends him to Cammello, another aged associate recently released from prison on medical grounds. Cammello, however, is more preoccupied with his terminal illness and his own last days with his wife, and he drives Manuel away, unwilling to take risks or commitments beyond his final moments.

Vasco tracks down Polniuman’s home by following signals from Manuel’s mobile, and the two end up shooting at close range. Polniuman is badly wounded, and Vasco strangles him to death, closing a brutal chase with a final, choking breath.

At Manuel’s insistence, the next day Cammello finds him a temporary bed on his terrace, then reconnects with [Daytona], now haunted by dementia. Daytona confronts Vasco and is kidnapped, and Vasco kills him. After consulting files that reveal Daytona’s ties to Cammello, Vasco places a transceiver under a table in Cammello’s apartment, turning the space into a surveillance trap.

Manuel discovers his house under the watch of Vasco’s colleagues and slips back to Cammello’s residence. The old man decides to accompany Manuel to a train station so the boy can leave the city. On the way, Manuel reveals that Vasco had photographed him performing fellatio on another adult for money, using that image to blackmail him into infiltrating the sex party and filming the minister.

Cammello returns home, finds the hidden transceiver, and heads for Tiburtina station, where fires and train cancellations throw the chaos of the day into sharper relief. There, he encounters Vasco and Bruno searching for Manuel. A violent confrontation erupts, and Cammello is killed in the shoot-out; Vasco is mortally wounded and dies shortly after.

At the police station, Manuel sees broadcasts of the minister’s stubborn refusal to resign, a moment shaped by the absence of corroborating evidence. He encounters one of Vasco’s sons and hands him his headphones, a poignant relic from the night’s events. Outside, the city’s fires and blackouts march on, leaving a bleak sense of ongoing unrest.

In the closing credits, the fates of the film’s key players are laid bare: Polniuman and Cammello are taken to the morgue, while Daytona’s body is recovered crushed inside the car in which he had been locked, a stark, final image of the night’s brutal cost.

This is a hard-edged, unflinching portrait of power, silence, and survival, where every action is weighed against a city already burning from within.