The Currents of San Patrignano is the first documentary series produced by Netflix Italy. It reconstructs the daring story of the community for drug addicts created in the late 1970s by Vincent Muccioli.
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The early years of adventure, the trials, the decline and the death of the founder: more than 15 years condensed into five one-hour episodes.
The community, unsurprisingly, was not happy. “A one-sided, summarized and partial story” says the note released, a few days after the launch of “docuseries".
The beginnings of San Patrignano
In the second half of the seventies, the scourge of heroin explodes in Italy. Hundreds of young people roam the cities like zombies in search of a solution, unable to break an addiction that has thrown their families into drama.
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Precisely at that time Vincenzo Muccioli, 45, who grew up in the middle of Romagna agrarian bourgeoisie, decides to convert his wife's family farmhouse into a recovery community for drug addicts.
He calls her San Patrignano, like the village of Coriano (Rimini), where – at the top of a hill – power arises.
A hippie community
In the early years, San Patrignano seemed like a hippie commune: the young guests, from all origins, live in the large rooms provided by Muccioli or in the driving a RV.
Relations with the municipality of Coriano are not exactly idyllic, due to the rapid expansion of the community, sewerage and nocturnal escapes of drug addicts.
However, Muccioli's method seems to work: around San Patrignano there is more and more interest and the number of guests is growing noticeably.
But who is Vincenzo Muccioli?
Married with two children, Muccioli finished his studies without graduating and began working in the tourism sector (his wife's family owned a hotel).
Big, fat and mustachioed, He is endowed with a great charisma that is also evident in the films of the time. His younger brother, Pier Andrea, a geologist, tells SanPa about Vincenzo's interest in esotericism and spiritualism: all aspects that will flow into the recovery community and that will come to light during the first trial against Muccioli.
The arrest in 1980
“We treat them with very powerful injections. Love, they are called,” explained Muccioli in front of the cameras. The pillars of the method used in the community were the work, regularity and discipline.
In October 1980, however, a somewhat different story emerges. A guest who fled the community tells police that she was segregated with four other people for 15 days.
Vincenzo Muccioli and other collaborators end up in prison: they stay there for more than a month, before being able to return to look after San Patrignano.
Success and decline
Funded by Gian Marco and Letizia Moratti and supported by well-known personalities, from Paolo Villaggio to Red Ronnie, San Patrignano grows to become the largest community of drug addicts in Europe.
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The problems for Muccioli, however, were not over. In the second half of the 1980s, further allegations of violence, mysterious suicides and investigations into unclear money transfers appear; after, after the discovery of Roberto Maranzano's body, another trial. THE docuseries ends in 1995, the year of the founder's death.
How is San Patrignano?
The documentary series is divided into five episodes: Birth & Standardization, Growth, Fame, Decline e Which gives.
The story does not use narration, but alternates photos and videos taken from 51 different archives and 25 interviews (in total 180 hours of footage) with characters who experienced the epic of San Patrignano firsthand.
The central question of “The Currents of San Patrignano”, repeated several times by different interviewees, is: “can you use some method to do good?”.
The narrative style is very similar to that of Wild Wild Country, a Netflix series that reconstructs the history of the community founded by Osho in the United States.
The characters of “The Currents of San Patrignano”
Among the witnesses involved by the authors are Andrea Muccioli, son of Vincenzo who led the community from 1995 to 2011; Antonio Boschini, former guest, now therapeutic manager of San Patrignano; Walter Delogu, former driver and bodyguard of Muccioli and his daughter Andrea, a TV presenter.
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Fabio Cantelli, guest and then head of the community's press office; judge Vincenzo Andreucci; journalist Luciano Nigro; Leonardo Montecchi and Sergio Pierini, respectively in charge of the Sert of Rimini and communist mayor of Coriano in the time of Vincenzo Muccioli; presenter Red Ronnie; former guests Fabio Mini and Antonella De Stefani.
The community reaction
These are the statements of Alessandro Rodino Dal Pozzo, president of San Patrignano, reported by the Corriere della Sera:
“It is an unbalanced story, which wanted to make spectacular some dramatic episodes that do not tell the story of the community in almost 40 years of life. We receive the series director for several days (…) and we provided her with a list of a large number of people who lived and still live in San Patrignano.”
A list that, according to Rodino Dal Pozzo, was “totally rejected” with the exception of Antonio Boschini.
The objections, responded co-author Carlo Gabardini, were widely expected: “If San Patrignano had praised us (…) I would have been worried,” he said.
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Watch the SANPA trailer in Italian:
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