Days of Antonio

Days of Antonio is based on a true story that took place in 1916 in Veredo, a small town near Milan, Italy. Antonio, a disabled boy, born with one leg shorter than the other in a poor peasant’s family, is locked by his parents in a roost to live with the chickens and to be shown off from time to time like a circus attraction. He grows up with the hens, identifying himself with the king of the henhouse, the rooster. At the age of fifteen, he starts satisfying his natural instincts with the hens, but one day his parents catch him with a prostitute and decide to lock him in an insane asylum. Days of Antonio starts the day the unlucky boy is admitted into the asylum, where he finds out the truth: he’s not an animal and will never be a human being. The story swings between tragedy and comedy like life in a madhouse from the point of view of the insane.