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2 votes
Recovering from a severe nervous breakdown and a great fan of thriller films, twenty-two-year-old Niccolò decides to go to the cinema with his dearest friend Viola. They are joined by their friends Ambra, Valerio, Matteo and Clelia, with whom they go to the largest multiplex in their city, a place at the center of several sinister urban legends. When, at the end of the film, the group decides to spend the night inside the cinema to make fun of the maniacal and ambiguous guard, the six will find themselves grappling with a macabre secret.
Status
Released
Original Language
IT

Roughly chronological, from 3/96 to 11/96, with a coda in spring of 1997: inside compounds of Aum Shinrikyo, a Buddhist sect led by Shoko Asahara. (Members confessed to a murderous sarin attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995.) We see what they eat, where they sleep, and how they respond to media scrutiny, on-going trials, the shrinking of their fortunes, and the criticism of society. Central focus is placed on Hiroshi Araki, a young man who finds himself elevated to chief spokesman for Aum after its leaders are arrested. Araki faces extreme hostility from the Japanese public, who find it hard to believe that most followers of the cult had no idea of the attacks and even harder to understand why these followers remain devoted to the religion, if not the violence.

Guardia
After participating in a séance, young Laura begins to behave strangely. Alarmed, her parents ask Father Olmedo, one of the few exorcists authorized by the Vatican to intervene in cases of demonic possession, for help.