Born in 1914 at the dawn of cinema, Italy’s censorship law felled some giants of the silver screen – including Last Tango in Paris – but now faces its own curtain call. “Film censorship has been abolished,” announced culture minister Dario Franceschini in a statement late on Monday.
“The system of controls and interventions that still allow the state to intervene in the freedom of artists has been definitively ended.” As a result, it will now no longer be possible to block the release of a new film or demand edits for moral or religious reasons. Filmmakers will instead classify their own movies based on the age of the audience.
