Palio

2015 • 91 minutes

About this movie

The Palio is the oldest horse race in the world, and turns the Italian city of Siena into a high-stakes battleground of strategy, intrigue, and simmering machismo. In the eye of the storm stand the jockeys – adored if they succeed, despised if they fail. PALIO follows the legendary maestro Gigi Bruschelli, winner of 13 races and master of the intrigues that surround the Palio, and his former protégé Giovanni Atzeni, a handsome young contender driven by a fearless passion to become number one. This heart-racing new documentary exposes the notoriously closed world of this ancient race and the larger-than-life personalities of those involved in an epic and cinematic tale of Italian life in microcosm.

Ratings and reviews

This was a decent, entertaining documentary. Not a great film, and not something I'd ever watch again, unlike great documentaries like 'Closer to the Edge'.

Bold. Brilliant. Beautiful. Palio takes you to Siena and explores the intrigues that grip the town as they live out their hopes and fears through the most intense horse race in the world. Beautifully shot, and by turns utterly gripping and genuinely funny, Palio sets a standard that other documentaries can only aspire to.

non vale neanche un centesimo. una buffonata