Dir: Michele Placido | Writer: Stefano Massini| Michele Placido | 88min | Drama | Italian
Veteran Italian director Michele Placido’s grainy slice of social realism is a timely and engrossing character drama that succeeds despite its low budget credentials and grainy feel. Based on real events, 7 MINUTES is told in intimate close-up from the POV of its female characters who all work in a textile factory in the outskirts of Rome.
Very much along the lines of the Dardennes Brothers’ Two Days, One Night (2014) this is a much more intense and angry affair but its feisty authenticity conveys the feeling of betrayal and bitterness that the women feel when they are given two hours to decide the fate of 300 of their colleagues facing redundancy in an increasingly hostile and stressful urban environment where they are all struggling to make ends meet.
Impassioned performances by Clémence Poésy and Karen Di Porto (in debut) the standouts. Anne Consigny plays the factory boss with sensitive grace in this intelligent and believable story based on a play by Stefano Massini . MT
CINEMA MADE IN ITALY | 1-5 MARCH 2017