ROME: Italian movie distributors have baulked at the title of a new satirical screwball “I’ve killed Berlusconi”, with producers saying screening deals have been reneged upon.

“The film’s title has scared the distributors,” bosses at independent Collepardo Film said on Friday. “We had a deal with a network of cinemas across Rome and Florence, but they ditched us at the last minute.” Following the zany adventures of one Matteo Luisi from a domestic dispute, the film sees its lead character knock down a man in the street who turns out to be Silvio Berlusconi, who swept back into power through elections in April.

From the fictitious death of Berlusconi, known to Italians as Il Cavaliere, flows a series of satirical reflections on politics and the media in contemporary Italy.

Just three screens are presently showing the film, in Rome, Florence and Turin. Movie theatres in Sicily and Naples are due to show it from June 27, while it is also slated to open a local film festival in Caserta, near Naples.

A previous skewering of Berlusconi, entitled “Il Caimano”, met with greater success in 2006, possibly because Berlusconi was out of office at the time.

Taken up by over 400 screens, it was nominated for a Golden Palm at Cannes that year, winning six David di Donatello awards at the Italian national oscars.

Berlusconi’s principal political opponent Walter Veltroni hopes Italian voters will prove less fearful, after calling for a campaign of demonstrations later this year to some 2,500 delegates at his party’s first conference since electoral defeat.

“Silvio Berlusconi is incapable of drawing any distinction between (his) private and public interests,” Veltroni said, in a clear reference to Italian lawmakers backing a bill on Wednesday to kick entire categories of trials including one against Berlusconi himself into long grass.

The prime minister was facing in a Milan court charges that he gave $600,000 to his British lawyer David Mills in exchange for false testimony in two cases dating back to the 1990s. Under the new proposal, the case would be shelved for 12 months.

“I’m outraged, but not surprised,” added Veltroni, who won 12.5 million votes, or 38 per cent, against Berlusconi’s 15.5 million votes, or 47.3 per cent, in April’s senate elections.—AFP