The movie is based off of author Marquis de Sade’s book Salò, originally written in the 18th century, and  has been banned in many countries due to its graphic violence and sadism. The film focuses on four wealthy, corrupted facist libertines who kidnap 18 boys and girls and subject them to 4 months of extreme violence, sadism, and mental torture. Set in Nazi controlled Italy in the mid 1940s, film director Pier Paolo Pasolini has drawn much of the film’s storyline from Sade’s novel as well as from his own personal accounts of living in the Republic of Salò during the rule of Mussolini’s Fascist regime.

Often heralded as one of the most important films of the 20th centurty from film makers such as Martin Scorsese and Michael Haneke, this extremely graphic tale of perverse consumption connects the brutality of Fascism to what Pasolini saw as the brutalizing effects of the modification of sexuality under late capitalism.