Flavio Briatore
Documentary on the life of seven time Formula 1 world champion driver Michael Schumacher.
In 2007 Queens Park Rangers, a small Football Club of West London, were bottom of England's Second League and 2 hours from bankruptcy. Just as the club faced liquidation, they were bought by billionaire businessmen. Filmed in an observational fashion from a poetic distance, the documentary follows the larger than life and high profile characters who put their money and reputations on the line through 4 tumultuous years of enormous ups and downs. For 98 dramatic minutes we are given unprecedented access and remarkable insight into the worlds of sport, business, finance, power and ego - culminating in success in 2011, when QPR won promotion to the Premier League and the four year plan - set out by the owners in 2007 - was spectacularly achieved.
In a country where bella figura is a national pastime, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is the maestro of media manipulation. Having risen to political primacy with the aid of his Mediaset empire, he now controls 90% of the bel paese’s television channels including the state-run RAI network. Quantity, it seems, does not equal quality. Fed on a diet of semi-naked dancing girls, inane competitions and rickety reality shows built around the most ridiculous of premises, is it any wonder that Italians are becoming a nation of fame-hungry wannabes?
