The love between Greek anti-junta activist Alekos Panagoulis and Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci is now a television film and will be screened in Italy by RAI next October. Actors Vittoria Belvedere (Oriana Fallaci ) and Vinicio Marchioni ( Alekos Panagoulis ) play the couple, and were in Athens about a week ago to participate in the filming.
Sites chosen by director Marco Turco for shooting the TV movie “La Vita di Oriana Fallaci” (“The Life of Oriana Fallaci”) included the Acropolis , the home of Panagoulis at Kinosargous and Tourkovounia Hills, from where authorities begin tracking the protagonist.
Initially, the movie makers had decided that production would stay several days in Athens for the shooting, but were forced to limit their time to the absolutely necessary, as production was running over expenses. This meant that the scene of the fatal road accident in which Alekos Panagoulis was killed, was shot in Rome.
The film crew said they loved Athens and felt that during the days they spent in the city they had a great time. It helped that they stayed in a hotel on Dionysiou Areopagitou Street and were able, in their spare time, to walk and live in Athens .
The production of the TV movie in Italy has been undertaken by the Fandango company. The film is directed by Marco Turco and some of the scenes were shot in the Italian village of Pelago, where the young Fallaci, lived during the war.
In Greece, Nicole Alexandropoulou's Libellula Productions had the responsibility of production, in cooperation with Blonde. Libellula Productions has already begun efforts to screen the telefilm in Greece. At the same time, the idea of shooting a film, in Greece, based on the life of Alekos Panagoulis, is being looked into.
Oriana Fallaci (29 June 1929 – 15 September 2006) was an Italian journalist, author, and political interviewer. A former partisan during WWII, she had a long and successful journalistic career. Fallaci became famous worldwide for her coverage of war and revolution, and her interviews with many world leaders during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. In Greece she is known for her love affair with Greek politician anti-junta resistance fighter Alekos Panagoulis.
Her book “Interview with History,” contains candid, lengthy, penetrating interviews with Indira Gandhi, Willy Brandt, the late Shah of Iran, Yasser Arafta, Golda Meir, Deng Xiaoping, Lech Walesa, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Muammar Gaddafi, and Vietnamese general Vo Nruyen Giap during the Vietnam War. The interview with Kissinger was published in Playboy, with Kissinger describing himself as "the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse." Kissinger later wrote that it was "the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press."
After retirement, she returned to the spotlight after writing a series of articles and books critical of Islam that aroused support as well as controversy.
In the early 1970s Fallaci had an affair with the subject of one of her interviews, Alexandros Panagoulis, who had been a solitary figure in the Greek resistance against the 1967 dictatorship, having been captured, heavily tortured and imprisoned for his (unsuccessful) assassination attempt against dictator Georgios Papadopoulos. Panagoulis died in 1976, under controversial circumstances, in a road accident. Fallaci maintained that Panagoulis was assassinated by remnants of the junta and her book Un Uomo (A Man) was inspired by his life.
Fallaci died on 15 September 2006, in her native Florence, of lung cancer. She was a lifelong heavy smoker, but she nevertheless attributed contracting cancer as a consequence of her stay in Kuwait in 1991 after Saddam Hussein had ordered troops to burn hundreds of oil wells. She was buried in the Cimitero Evangelico degli Allori, alongside her family members and a stone memorial to Alekos Panagoulis, her companion.
Alexandros Panagoulis (2 July 1939 – 1 May 1976) was a Greek politician and poet. He took an active role in the fight against the junta (1967–1974) in Greece, becoming famous for his attempt to assassinate dictator Papadopoulos on 13 August 1968, but also for the torture that he was subjected to during his detention. After the restoration of democracy he was elected to the Greek parliament as a member of the Center Union (E. K.).
After the restoration of democracy, Alexandros Panagoulis was elected as Member of Parliament for the Center Union party in the 1974 elections. He refused a collaboration with PASOK and Andreas Papandreou, of whom had a negative opinion. He made also a series of allegations against mainstream politicians who he said had openly or secretly collaborated with the junta. He eventually resigned from his party, after disputes with the leadership, but remained as an independent deputy. He stood by his allegations, which he made openly against the then Minister of National Defence, Evangelos Venizelos and others. He reportedly received political pressure and threats against his life in order to persuade him to tone down his allegations.
Panagoulis was killed on 1 May 1976 at the age of 36 in a car accident on Vouliagmenis Avenue in Athens, when a frantically speeding car with a Corinthian named Stefas behind the wheel diverted Panagoulis' car and forced it to crash.The crash killed Panagoulis almost instantaneously. This happened only two days before files of the junta's military police that he was in possession of were to be made public. The files, which never materialized, reportedly included evidence of his allegations of collaboration. There was much speculation in the Greek press that the car accident was staged to silence Panagoulis and to cover up the documents in question. However, Panagoulis was a centrist popular leader that could have challenged the hegemony of Andreas Papandreou in the center and left-of-center political spectrum.
In August 1973, after four and a half years in jail, he benefited from a general amnesty that the military regime granted to all political prisoners during a failed attempt by Papadopoulos to liberalize his regime. Panagoulis went into self-exile in Florence, in order to continue the resistance. There he was hosted by Oriana Fallaci, his companion who was to become his biographer. His death left Fallaci shattered, and their hopes of a life together dashed.
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