The longest miscarriage of justice in recent Italian history: that of former shepherd Beniamino Zuncheddu, now 62, sentenced to life in prison for a triple homicide that occurred in Sinnai in 1991. His innocence was recognized with an acquittal only in 2024, after approximately 33 years in prison, thanks to the efforts of a young lawyer, Mauro Trogu, who, after a seven-year legal battle, succeeded in obtaining a retrial.
A story that is recounted with rigor and intensity in "Zustissia," the debut film by Francesco Piras, based on the book by Trogu and Zuncheddu, "Io sono innocente" (De Agostini Libri). In the courtroom drama, which premieres in theaters on October 8th in Sardinia and from the 15th throughout Italy with Piper Film, Fabrizio Ferracane plays the shepherd, while Michele Riondino plays the lawyer, in a cast that includes Geppi Cucciari, Paola Giannini, Jacopo Cullin, Francesco Colella, and Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu. The one who drew the most attention at the press conference in Rome was the real Zuncheddu, who has not yet received the main compensation for his wrongful imprisonment (he only received one of 30,000 euros for being locked up in small, overcrowded cells) : "I really liked the film, it moved me because it took me back in time to when they caught me. "Even though it would take many films to tell the whole story, from beginning to end," he explains. In these two years of freedom, "I'm recovering well, it's no longer like at the beginning, when I looked like a walking corpse." To cope, during the long detention, "I clung a little to faith, a little to hope, I thought a lot about the family and the country that believed in me. I told myself 'one day I'll get out of this place.'"
After 33 years in prison, "no one has ever apologized to me," he adds, also citing the support he received during the process of retrial by the Radical Party, which is now also promoting the Zuncheddu bill, to guarantee a provisional financial compensation to those acquitted at the end of a trial: a check that runs from the moment of acquittal until the sentence for damages is awarded. "Perhaps we could inaugurate a new category, that of urgent films," comments Lisa Nur Sultan, co-writer of "Zustissia" with Niccolò Gentili, "because I believe that after 33 years it is quite urgent to give back to Beniamino and all the Daring Ones of Italy the dignity of being able to buy a coffee for his friends at the bar without waiting for his family's money." His story "struck us deeply also because of the way he didn't choose anger (as a reaction). It is not a story of resentment or revenge but a story in which good people found themselves, allied themselves and made sure that justice cured justice."
