Film portrait of Falcone, Borsellino

(ANSA) - Rome, May 5 - An iconic photo of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino laughing together became a point of reference for director Fiorenza Infascelli in her work on the film "Era d'Estate".
    The film offers an intimate look at the two men during a the few months in 1985 that they spent working together on the tiny Sardinian island of Asinara, just prior to the start of their historic Maxi Trial against the Sicilian mafia.
    Falcone and Borsellino were killed by the mafia in 1992, and the image of the two laughing together has become a symbol for their fight against the mafia, as well as a testimony to the deep human and ethical understanding they shared.
    Era d'Estate (Once in Summer) stars Massimo Popolizio as Falcone, Beppe Fiorello as Paolo Borsellino, Claudia Potenza as his wife Agnese Borsellino and Valeria Solarino as Francesca Morvillo, Falcone's then-girlfriend and future wife.
    Following the film's debut last fall at the Rome Film Festival, it arrives in Italian theatres with a premiere event on May 23 and 24, timed to the memorial of the two killings that took the men's lives in May and July of 1992.
    In the film's unique glimpse into the personalities of the two judges, viewers see the events that unfolded during the weeks that the judges were "exiled" on Asinara with their families to prepare for the Maxi Trial, after authorities uncovered Cosa Nostra death threats against the magistrates.
    This forced isolation in nature - living together with their families in a small guesthouse on the island, in the shadow of the maximum security prison there - set the conditions under which Falcone and Borsellino managed to write the majority of their case for the largest mafia trial ever conducted.
    The idea for the film came to its director during shooting for her 2011 film Pugni Chiusi (Clenched Fists), a documentary about Sardinian chemical plant workers who went to live in the prison on Asinara in protest.
    "One of them took me to see a red house and told me about Falcone and Borsellino's stay on the island," Infascelli said.
    "I got the idea of telling the story of this moment in their lives, because it's not well-known, and it gave me a way to show them in a more familial dimension, to understand more about their personalities," she said.
    "I discovered how ironic, how funny they were, and how many passions they had".