In the night between May 8 and 9, 1997, a group of ragtag Veneto independence enthusiasts from the province of Padua hijacked an ACTV ferry and attempted an assault on the Campanile of Piazza San Marco in Venice, aboard a makeshift armored vehicle that would become famous as the “tanko.” This improvised tank was built in the garage of one of these eight raiders, who went by the names Flavio Contin, Cristian Contin, Fausto Faccia, Gilberto Buson, Antonio Barison, Luca Peroni, Moreno Menini, and Andrea Viviani. A ninth man, Giuseppe “Bepìn” Segato, was the mastermind of the operation but did not take part in the assault.
The episode concluded at dawn on May 9 with the intervention of the Carabinieri’s GIS unit and the arrest of the eight men, who were nicknamed “i Serenissimi.” Yet this tale quickly became famous throughout Italy and took on a legendary aura in Veneto, serving almost as a symbol of the territory, its province, its socio-political tensions, and the anthropological and identity traits of its people.
A frame for telling the Serenissimi’s story and their tank on screen will be provided by Francesco Sossai, the director of the Italian breakthrough film of the 2025-2026 season, Le città di pianura. That film, which quietly premiered at Cannes, went on to gross nearly 3 million euros and earned eight David di Donatello awards, and it portrays characters and situations rooted in the same territory.
The project, hinted at a few months earlier by Sossai in an interview with the French daily Le Monde, was confirmed today by the appearance on Instagram of a casting notice. The accompanying photo shows a large “T” in a military-style typeface perched against a green camouflage backdrop, with the Campanile of San Marco seen in the backlit silhouette.
The new Sossai film, expected to be titled T, is produced by Cinemaundici, the company founded in 1998 by Ermanno Olmi, Luigi Musini, and Roberto Cicutto, and now owned by Olivia Musini.
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