Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

Almost fifty years after the release of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s iconic Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, the heretical Italian director’s swan song, which remains to this day one of the most controversial films of all times, will receive its Greek premiere on the GNO Alternative Stage.

Still banned in several countries all over the world, the film that shocked audiences and critics alike upon its release in 1975 (shortly after its creator’s murder) is based on Marquis de Sade’s unfinished novel Les 120 Journées de Sodome (The 120 Days of Sodom). The film’s story is set in the Republic of Salò, a puppet-state of Nazi Germany situated in Italy, where, among other things, the fascists undertake the education of nine girls and nine boys and –after having them taken away with the consent of their families– turn them into slaves and subject them to extreme physical and mental torture.

This absolutely liminal psychosexual investigation of the aesthetics and philosophy of totalitarianism by Pasolini and his co-screenwriter, Sergio Citti, is turned, at the GNO Alternative Stage, into a music theatre production by subversive director Aris Biniaris in collaboration with composer Jeph Vanger and an extensive cast of distinguished actors.