Marco Bellochio, revered Italian director of I Pugni in Tasca and L’Ora di Religione has been unable to find backing for his latest project Italia Mia, a dark satire of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Newspaper Corriere della Sera quoted Bellocchio as saying his protagonist would be a young girl caught up in ‘well-known circumstances that have ended up in all the newspapers’, climaxing at a ‘huge party at a luxurious island villa.’

Allusions to Berlusconi are obvious: the 74yr old has been in the press recently accused of paying for sex with a 17yr old girl, Ruby. The teenager has said she was among a large group of young women invited to parties at Berlusconi’s Arcore villa near Milan. She revealed in a TV interview that the prime minister gave her 7,000 euros last year to ‘help her financially.’

Whilst some have accused Berlusconi of putting a stranglehold on the arts in Italy, screenwriter Bencivenni disagreed, saying that ‘[corrupt] behaviour is so embedded in Italy today, it doesn’t look strange anymore.’