This film contains explicit depictions of sexual violence and psychological abuse that many will find deeply distressing. No one under the age of 17 will be admitted.
Acclaimed Italian poet, writer, playwright, actor, and director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s controversial final film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) relocates the Marquis de Sade’s infamous 1785 novel Les 120 Journées de Sodome – which he wrote while he was imprisoned in the Bastille – to the final days of Mussolini’s Nazi-backed Salò Republic, where four Fascist elites imprison a group of boys and girls and subject them to escalating acts of psychological and physical torment. A bold exploration of how authoritarian power strips away humanity and turns bodies into commodities, the film’s unflinching and clinical style forces audiences to confront the terrifying logic behind the kind of oppression that can become normalized through bureaucratically-imposed obedience and fear.
Completed at a moment of political volatility in Italy, Salò emerged as one of the most daring anti-fascist works ever committed to film. Just weeks before the film’s release, Pasolini was murdered under circumstances that are still widely questioned. While officially labeled as a random act, a long-standing theory suggests his provocative art and activism, culminating in this scandalous cinematic work, placed him in extremely dangerous territory. Whatever the truth may be, Salò remains Pasolini’s final declaration that art must not look away from cruelty or corruption, and that silencing the artist is often the first agenda of oppressive power. Half a century later, the film and its legacy stand as a landmark in the fight against censorship, underscoring how essential it is to defend the voices that dare to confront and expose injustice.
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom will be presented in its original Italian soundtrack, with English subtitles.
