Padrone e Sotto

Tricarico in the deep south of Italy. Those who are allowed to drink are winners. And those who remain sober are losers. That’s what filmmaker Michele Cirigliano understood as a child about the drinking game ‘Padrone e Sotto’ when he sat in a shabby bar watching the older men play it. As the beer flows and emotions flare up thirty years later, he attempts to understand what has confused him about this game since his childhood: Where exactly is the line between game and reality? Are these men just playing? Or do they really mean what they say when their verbal aggression breaks out? As it explores this Mezzogiorno closed male society, Padrone e Sotto takes a look behind the superficial pleasure of being with friends, and presents itself as a social study of universal mechanisms of power. (Zurich Film Festival)