Toxic Love

This is an extraordinary movie about the everyday life of a group of heroin addicts in suburban Rome in the early eighties. The non-professional actors are real addicts, and this gives to the story a sense of reality that is tragic and poetic at the same time. Their sense of humanity and freshness, despite the horror of addiction, is unique and moving. Unfortunately many of them were killed by heroin or aids in the years following the movie. The screenplay was written by the director Claudio Caligari together with Guido Blumir, a sociologist who worked on drug-related issues for a long time. The direction is brave and clever, with a focus on human substance more than anything else. One wonders why Italian cinema is not able to produce meaningful movies like this any more.