56 minutes, 2015
Director: Olivier TOSCER (France)
Production: Cinétévé (France) with the participation of France 3 (France)

February 1986. The French discover a businessman with a charmer’s smile and unshakable self-assurance: Silvio Berlusconi. In Italy he was already the king of private television. In Paris, the Socialist President François Mitterrand had just given him a concession to run a new private television channel: La Cinq.
But even back then the highly successful Italian billionaire was controversial, suspected of having links with the Sicilian Mafia.
Getting to the heart of the power system and the machinations of money laundering, this film tells how Cosa Nostra’s protection and dirty money hang over the whole length of Berlusconi’s career, since his beginnings in the Milanese property business to his success in politics, by way of his triumph in commercial television.
With a scenario worthy of a thriller and based on first-hand accounts, many from Berlusconi’s close associates as well as some of the best-known anti-Mafia magistrates, the film also shows how Italy’s most powerful man has always managed to slip through the judicial net.

Olivier TOSCER
Born in 1967, Olivier TOSCER has written and directed six documentary films for different channels: in November 2015, “Djihad 2.0” for LCP-Assemblée Nationale; in August 2015, “Berlusconi & la mafia, scandales à l’italienne” for France 3, RTBF, RTS; in September 2013, “Crise grecque: une faillite européenne” shown on France 3’s “Docs Interdits”, was praised by the press; in 2010, after several investigations into the corruption in French Polynesia, he co-directed for Canal Plus his first film: “JPK, l’homme qui faisait trembler Tahiti”; in 2011 for Arte he wrote and directed “Les millions perdus de l’Europe”, a film about corruption in the European Union; in June 2012, for France 2, he co-wrote and directed the first French film about High Frequency Trading: “Finance Folle: l’attaque des robots-traders”.
Olivier TOSCER has also published four books. The first, “Argent public, fortunes privées”, published by Denoël in 2002 then by Folio Documents, is required reading for several university programmes.
Since 1999 he has also worked at L’Obs. Initially running their financial investigations, he now spends most of his time on the issues of terrorism and major crime.