One of the most controversial stories in recent Italian news arrives on Netflix. From November 5, the platform launches the docuseries Terrace Sentimentoinspired by the case of Alberto Genovese, the Milanese entrepreneur defined for years as the “king of startups”, arrested in 2020 on charges of sexual assault and drug dealing.
Conceived by Alessandro Garramone, Davide Bandiera and Annalisa Reggi, directed by Nicola Prosatore, the project tells the story of the rise and disastrous fall of a man who is the symbol of an era: one in which success is a measure of value and the night becomes a showcase in which to show oneself. The docuseries opens a window onto a dazzling Milan, made of money, excess and the desire to appear, where behind the lights of the clubs a ferocious loneliness is often hidden.
Alberto Genovese: the rise, the decline, the series
Born in 1977, graduated from Bocconi and with international experience between Paris and Harvard, Alberto Genovese was considered one of the most brilliant entrepreneurs in Italy. He had founded successful companies such as Facile.it, Prima Insurance And Brumbrumembodying the dream of the self-made man.
In 2020, however, everything collapses. An 18-year-old girl reports having been abused in her penthouse overlooking the Duomo, the so-called “Terrazza Sentimento”. From there an investigation takes shape that will lead to the discovery of a world of private parties, drug use and testimonies from other young women, up to the judicial sentences that will mark the end of her entrepreneurial parable.
The title of the docuseries takes its name from that attic, which has become a symbol of excess transformed into tragedy. Terrace Sentimento reconstructs the facts through procedural documents, archive materials and testimonies, under the advice of the journalist of Corriere della Sera Giuseppe Guastella. Prosatore, on the other hand, chooses a sober and respectful visual language: no real images, but reconstructions generated with artificial intelligence, to restore the truth of the facts without making the pain spectacular.
The abyss behind the light
There is something terribly human in the collapse of those who, dazzled by their own splendor, stop recognizing the boundaries between freedom and abuse. Terrace Sentimento it is not just the chronicle of a descent, but a mirror that reflects the image of a world sick of appearance, in which consensus is confused with power and desire with domination.
Violence never arises from nothing: it germinates in the silence of those who watch, in the indifference of those who applaud, in the culture that still today struggles to recognize the fragility of the victims. Every story like Genovese’s is a collective wound that forces us to choose a side between those who deny or minimize, and those who at least try to understand, to no longer allow the shadow of privilege to darken the face of humanity.
