Giuli slams “easy financing system” under centre-left predecessor in latest twist to a shocking story that has gripped Italy.
Italy’s culture minister Alessandro Giuli on Thursday expressed his “dismay and anger” after it emerged that a US murder suspect had availed of an almost €900,000 tax credit for a film that was never made.
The case involves Francis Kaufmann, a 46-year-old US citizen, who was was arrested in Greece last week in relation to the deaths of a woman and a baby girl whose bodies were found in Rome’s largest park earlier this month.
Italian news site Open reported that the man – also known by the fake name Rexal Ford – availed of a tax credit of €863,595.90 towards the production of Stelle della Notte, a film which he was to direct.
The funding agreement was signed on 27 November 2020 by Nicola Borrelli, then director general of the Cinema and Audiovisual department of the Italian culture ministry, then headed by centre-left minister Dario Franceschini.
However the would-be director “Rexal Ford” – currently under investigation in Italy for the alleged murder of his partner, 28-year-old Russian citizen Anastasia Trofimova, and their baby daughter Andromeda – never produced the film.
The project was presented to the culture ministry by the international production company Tintagel Films Llc, based in Malta, created by Kaufmann under a false identity, complete with a detailed script, budget and even an American passport – which has since turned out to be fake.
“The fact that Francis Kaufmann, who is being investigated for the terrible murder of a woman and an 11-month-old baby girl, through a company under investigation, indirectly benefited from €863,000 in tax credit… doubles the dismay and anger in the face of a system of cinema financing that has allowed carelessness and waste in the past” – Giuli said in a statement – “These are unforgivable ‘distractions’, a legacy that previous governments have left us with in respect to tax credit.”
Giuli pledged to continue to reform the system “with rigour and discernment” to avoid “scammers” and to “protect the honorability of Italian Cinema and eradicate every pocket of parasitism”.
The intervention by the minister, a member of Giorgia Meloni’s ruling right-wing coalition, is the latest chapter in a row that has put him at loggerheads with prominent figures in Italian cinema.
In an open letter last month, 100 directors and actors wrote to Giuli to address the “working and production crisis in Italian cinema” which is “in crisis” due to uncertainty and delays largely fuelled by “the government’s handling of the tax credit reform”.
The signatories urged the ministry to listen to their “urgent requests” and called for an end to “baseless controversy and unacceptable attacks on those who have rightfully criticised the ministry’s actions, such as colleagues Elio Germano and Geppi Cucciari”.
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