La briglia sul collo (Cecilia Mangini, 1974) eng sub

Seven-year-old Fabio Spada is narrated into our awareness with pedestrian, bureaucratic details: the name of his parents, the exact location of his family’s cramped living situation in a tower block in the Roman suburbs, and this suburb’s transport connections. The film consists of interviews with the proverbial “village” involved in raising this child, who has been deemed a misfit by his school. Fabio’s father, propped up at a bar and raising a glass to the camera crew, recounts his sons’ misdeeds with amused detachment, including his attempted murder of the family’s pet fish a week earlier. His mother struggles to talk about her son as she changes her youngest child, the others causing havoc around her – and asks the film crew whether they’re going to edit out the chaos. A neighbour, meanwhile, notes Fabio’s lack of respect for his mother and fear of his father.