Girlfriend in a Coma (film)

Girlfriend in a Coma is a documentary about Italian and western decline directed, produced and cowritten by Annalisa Piras, journalist and filmmaker, cowritten and narrated by Bill Emmott, former editorinchief of The Economist. It has been lauded as being groundbreaking in its creative combination of animation, interviews and hard facts, and has caused fierce controversy in Italy.

Excerpts from Dante Alighieris Divine Comedy, read by Benedict Cumberbatch, are used to illustrate the vices and virtues of Italy, connecting todays malaise to that of seven centuries earlier and placing it in the context of Italian history and culture. Animation by the Londonbased artist Phoebe Boswell provides a fil rouge through the film that is light in appearance but dark in nature.The documentary, using the eyes of an English outsider directed by a passionate, but exiled, Italian insider, exposes the dire situation of Italian politics and the process of economic and social decline the country has suffered during the last two decades, treating the decline as a warning of what might happen elsewhere in the West. The decline has occurred amid a collapse of moral values and the victory of Mala Italia over Buona Italia. Critical of Silvio Berlusconi, the former Prime Minister, for some of the actions his government undertook or failed to undertake, and for his inappropriate use of his media companies to influence the Italian electorate, the documentary also does not spare criticism of the Left. ........

Source: Wikipedia