L'affare Bonnard (first feature)

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official site

L'affare Bonnard

L'affare Bonnard

original title:

L'affare Bonnard

directed by:

cinematography:

editing:

Luigi Cristiano Samassa

production:

country:

Italy

year:

2010

film run:

96'

format:

35mm - colour

release date:

01/04/2011

The story takes place in Capri and Istanbul.
There is a revolutionary chemical formula for waste disposal that can change the future. The scientist who elaborated it is a brilliant chemical engineer.
Great economic considerations are at stake, and some people are ready to do anything to get hold of the precious formula before its diffusion. There is a daring pursuit in the Istanbul Grand Bazaar, among the carpet and pottery dealers; the hunted man manages to escape and takes shelter in the poor house of a young boy and his grandfather. From there he telephones his friend Lorenzo Vallesi, a chemical engineer as well, who is on holiday in his villa in Capri, convalescent after a heath attack.
The man from Istanbul is desperate and implores Lorenzo to help him; it is a matter of life and death, and the cause is always the formula. Because of his health, Lorenzo can’t go to Istanbul, so he confides in a friend of him, Pierfrancesco Maria Guccini, count of Rosazza, called Piero, who offers to help. That very night Lorenzo dies of a second heart attack.
Piero, driven by the moral obligation to fulfil Lorenzo’s last wishes and also by his love for adventure, leaves for Istanbul, after telling the story to his best friend, the commander of carabinieri in Capri, Costanzo Massa.
Things won’t be easy for Piero, it is a struggle against time to save the life of the scientist and to put away the formula.
Among a restaurant in one of the most ill-famed quarters, equivocal night clubs, a romantic café on the hill overlooking the town, and the Topkapi, the palace of the ottoman sultans, Piero realizes that the matter is much more complicated then he and Lorenzo had thought. When the disfigured corpse of a man is found in the Bosforo, he calls Costanzo, who is in Durazzo for an enquiry into smugglers of illegal immigrants on the route Istanbul-Albania-Italy. Costanzo understands that the story of the formula could have disturbing implications, and goes to Istanbul.
But an absolutely unexpected fact, mixing things up, occurs. A secret world, made up of dishonest scientists and lawyers connected to a group of terrorists, and a series of wretched characters implicated in the story, comes out. It is like a game, but the truth will finally come out.