Two years in Aspromonte: the story of the Celadon kidnapping, the longest in Italian history

The Celadon kidnapping is one of the black stories of Italy in the 1980s. The most difficult page of a season that today does not want to remember. But the kidnapping season has forever affected the lives of entire families. The life of those who have experienced firsthand the deprivations, the chains, the movement from hideout to hideout. Carlo Celadon, 54, suffered the longest kidnapping for profit in the history of Italy. 831 days, two whole years that changed his destiny. Afterwards, in almost disbelief that he was still alive, he just wanted to forget. That story today becomes a fiction, created with the aim of bringing to mind a decade dotted with kidnappings.

January 25, 1988 is a Monday, and the Celadon family lives in a villa in Arzignano. The attack takes place in the evening: four criminals break into the house; two armed men keep the victims at bay, while two others tie them with rope and bandages. Then the attackers take Carlo, eighteen years old, son of Candido, an industrialist from Vicenza, they push him into the trunk of a car and run away. Thus begins the Celadon kidnapping.

But Carlo Celadon is not a name. He is a man who asked for a compensatory oblivion on the matter. This is why he has always refused reconstructions and documentaries. Because he wanted to keep that story buried within himself. After thirty-five years Dennis Dellaia journalist and film-maker from Vicenza, found the right narrative key to reconstruct the story.

Soffiantini, the gentleman who helped his jailer after the kidnapping, has died

The spotlight moves up Gabriella, his girlfriend at the time. The person who kept Carlo hooked to life in the long letters from prison. The woman with whom the future was stingy with happiness. On the way back there were too many distances, and the story ended. But Celadon retains the memory of her as a “special person”.

«800 Days is a fiction film», explains the director, «in this case the narrative distance is also a form of respect for the dramatic human story experienced by Celadon. But it’s clear that we’ve always had that story in mind, the aim of our project is to restore the terrible period of kidnappings to the collective memory, which for over twenty years of the last century forced many families to live in terror. It should be remembered especially to younger people that from the 70s to the early 90s hundreds of people were kidnapped by the Anonima Sequestri, often subjected to long periods of harsh detention which ended only after the payment of very large sums of money. Not to mention some cases of hostages who never returned home.”

The Celadon case was unfortunately among the most dramatic: removed from the affection of his family on 25 January 1988, he was held hostage by the ‘Ndrangheta men for 831 daysmiraculously surviving a very harsh imprisonment. He was even sold to a second gang, even though the family had already paid the ransom. The film, which sees the very young Marta Dal Santo and Matteo Dal Ponte together with more experienced performers such as Davide Dolores (already seen in Inspector Montalbano) Vasco Mirandola (among the performers of the Oscar-winning film Mediterranean) and Fabio Testi, who plays the kidnappers’ baseman in the film, will be presented in its national premiere on 30 September in Breganze (Vicenza).

Carlo Celadon has come to terms with the past. Although he closed them, he approved this project as a form of catharsis from those dramatic two years. Even if his name, for public opinion, remains nailed to that faded newspaper page. «The kidnapped person is a mark that stays with you forever».