Francesco Maria Columbu was an Italian-American bodybuilder, powerlifter, actor, author, producer, and a licensed chiropractor.
Francesco Clemente Giuseppe Sparanero, known professionally as Franco Nero, is an Italian actor, producer, and director. His breakthrough role was as the title character in the Spaghetti Western film Django (1966), which made him a pop culture icon and launched an international career that includes over 200 leading and supporting roles in a wide variety of films and television productions.
Tessa Charlotte Rampling is an English actress. An icon of the Swinging Sixties, she began her career as a model. She was cast in the role of Meredith in the 1966 film Georgy Girl, which starred Lynn Redgrave. She soon began making French and Italian arthouse films, notably Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969) and Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter (1974). She went on to star in many European and English-language films, including Stardust Memories (1980); in The Verdict (1982); Long Live Life (1984), and The Wings of the Dove (1997). In the 2000s, she became the muse of French director François Ozon, appearing in several of his films, notably Swimming Pool (2003) and Young & Beautiful (2013). On television, she is known for her role as Dr. Evelyn Vogel in Dexter (2013).
Kill Them All and Come Back Alone is a 1968 Italian Spaghetti Western film directed by Enzo G. Castellari. It stars American actors Chuck Connors and Frank Wolff, and features a film score by Francesco De Masi.
The Sicilian is a novel by American author Mario Puzo. Published in 1984 by Random House Publishing Group (ISBN 0-671-43564-7), it is based on the life of Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano. It is set in the same universe as Puzo's most famous work, The Godfather (1969), and contains characters from The Godfather. It is regarded as The Godfather's literary sequel and is the second book in The Godfather novel series. It was adapted into a film in 1987, though all Godfather references were removed for copyright reasons in the film adaptation.
Salvatore Giuliano is a 1962 Italian drama film directed by Francesco Rosi. Using techniques of the documentary film, it recounts the criminal career of famous Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano between 1943 and 1950, his death. In 2008, the film was included in the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage's 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."
Walter Frank Hermann Wolff was an American actor whose film career began with roles in five 1958–61 Roger Corman productions and ended a decade later in Rome, after many appearances in European-made films, most of which were lensed in Italy.
Villa Rufinella, also called Villa Tuscolana, is a villa in Frascati, Italy.
Romanzo criminale is an Italian-language crime drama film released in 2005, directed by Michele Placido. It was highly acclaimed and won 15 awards. It is based on Giancarlo De Cataldo's 2002 novel, which is in turn inspired by the true story of the Banda della Magliana. The Magliana gang was one of the most powerful Italian criminal associations, dominating Rome's drug, gambling and other kinds of crime activities from the early 1970s until the death of Enrico De Pedis in 1992. The gang's affiliates started their career kidnapping rich people, drug dealing. From the 1970s they started working with the Italian secret service, fascists, terrorists, the Sicilian Mafia, the Camorra, and many more. Some gang members are still alive, as inmates of an Italian prison, or justice collaborators.
The Final Deduction is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, published by the Viking Press in 1961 and collected in the omnibus volume Three Aces.
Sergio Atzeni was an Italian writer.
Brigandage in southern Italy had existed in some form since ancient times. However its origins as outlaws targeting random travellers would evolve vastly later on in the form of the political resistance movement. During the time of the Napoleonic conquest of the Kingdom of Naples, the first signs of political resistance brigandage came to public light, as the Bourbon loyalists of the country refused to accept the new Bonapartist rulers and actively fought against them until the Bourbon monarchy had been reinstated. Some claim that the word brigandage is a euphemism for what was in fact a civil war.
Mussolini and I is a 1985 made-for-television docudrama film directed by Alberto Negrin. It chronicles the strained relationship between Italy's fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and his son-in-law and foreign minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, based on Ciano's diaries. Made in English as an Italian-French-German-Swiss-Spanish-US co-production, with Bob Hoskins, Anthony Hopkins and Susan Sarandon in the leading roles, it first aired on Rai Uno on 15 April 1985 in a 130-minute version. On 8 September 1985, it premiered in the USA on HBO in an extended four-hour version.
Attilio Cubeddu is a criminal from Sardinia who was a member of Anonima sarda, a term used for bandits engaged in various kinds of crime in the island, in particular kidnapping, from the 1960s onward. Since 1997, he is on the "List of most wanted fugitives in Italy" of the ministry of the Interior, since he left the prison of Badu 'e Carros in Nuoro, where he was detained for murder, serious injury and kidnapping. In 1998 investigations were extended internationally for his extradition.
Sardinian banditry is a term which describes an outlaw behavior typical of the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, dating back to the Roman Empire. Twentieth-century Sardinian banditry had economic and political overtones.
Francesco Zirano, OFM Conv. was a Roman Catholic priest from Sardinia and a professed member of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual. He is recognized as a martyr in the Catholic Church. Born and raised in Sardinia, he became an ordained priest in 1586. When Barbary pirates abducted and enslaved his cousin, Zirano raised funds over the course of several years to pay the ransom for his cousin's freedom. He traveled to Algiers in 1602 and helped four Christian slaves escape to freedom, but soldiers later targeted and imprisoned him. The Grand Council of Algiers sentenced him to death for his role in helping the slaves escape and for being a spy for the city's enemies, but his captors offered to spare his life if he would convert to Islam. He refused, and they executed him by flaying.
Anonima sarda is an Italian journalistic expression widely used by the Italian media as an umbrella to describe the Sardinian groups operating kidnappings for ransom, which took place for the most part in the Mediterranean island of Sardinia between the 1960s and 1997.
Graziano Mesina, also popularly known as Gratzianeddu in Sardinian language, is an Italian bandit of the Anonima sarda. He has escaped the authorities at least 10 times. He was called the "king of the kidnappers" by The New York Times in 1992. There have been books, songs, and at least one film about him.
Exterior Night is a 2022 Italian-language drama film co-written and directed by Marco Bellocchio based on the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro. The film is the second feature by Bellocchio based on the Moro case after Good Morning, Night, shot in 2003.
