"Fenoglio is an atypical hero of perplexity and doubt, of being one who has no certainty about anything and for this reason he is a good investigator. The worst investigators are those who have an intuition and cling to it as if it were the truth. The best are those capable of abandoning a hypothesis if it is not supported by the facts". This is what Gianrico Carofiglio, writer, former magistrate and former senator says in an interview with the Prix Italia on "Il Metodo Fenoglio", a series in 4 evenings from 27 November on Rai1 with Alessio Boni and Paolo Sassanelli based on the trilogy of his novels and co-produced by Rai Fiction - Clemart. According to Carofiglio "the directors were good at choosing this title The Fenoglio method, which is not mine I want to say, (my books are Una mutevole verità, L'estate fredda and La versione di Fenoglio) but I recognize myself". On how the character of Fenoglio was rendered by the protagonist Alessio Boni says: "I rarely imagine the face understood as precisely identifiable features of a character but the physicality is not too different. I believe that Boni has succeeded in giving a television sense to a novel character, in this sense, however, in a sort of inseparable artistic alliance with Sassanelli (who interprets the pinned Pellecchia) and in the TV series this is made even better". Carofiglio explains that he felt the need to restore the truth and to tell his past work as a prosecutor investigator. "I wrote novels even when I was a prosecutor - he reveals - but I never told those stories then, because it seemed to me that I would weaken them. Stories need a little distance, perspective, in my opinion. Having established those distances, it seemed to me the right time to tell those stories, through the alter ego of a marshal of the carabinieri. In the character of Fenoglio, in his approach to investigation and the relationship with people, an idea of respect and sense of doubt and limitation, I like to think that there are things that I tried to put into that work when I was doing it". Carofiglio also says that above all L'estate fredda was written to restore some truth about the many stupidities that have been said and are being said about the fight against organized crime. "It is not true that nothing has been done so far. In the nineties, we, I mean a group of magistrates in various places and a number of police officers, - he says - we stopped the ascent to the Serie A of the mafias, of the Apulian mafias that were becoming as dangerous as the others. This did not happen because there was a serious action of judicial investigative contrast. One of the reasons I wrote that novel is to re-establish the truth about it, to give reason, if not merit and honor to those who worked in often strenuous conditions." Carofiglio then underlines how in the series there is a plausible story of the investigative stories, "something that I must say as a technician is not very frequent in television series of all kinds. I didn't want there to be any strain in method and investigative procedure." Finally, Carofiglio does not hold back and also answers a question on the ongoing war between the government and the judiciary. "Unfortunately it is not new, many, many, - he underlines - have a bizarre idea of the principle of separation of powers that dates back to Montesquieu: the interpretation of them is that, if the magistrates agree with us they are independent, if they give us wrong they are politicized on the other side. It does not even require to be commented on such nonsense and an approach so capable of undermining the legitimacy of institutions from the depths".
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