Director: Michele Riondino
What looks like a reward turns into a psychological trap in Palazzina Laf, Michele Riondino's directorial debut about a factory worker who agrees to inform on his colleagues and ends up witnessing exactly how far a company will go to break the ones it wants gone.
What is Palazzina Laf about?
Caterino works the line at the Ilva steel plant in Taranto, doing his job without much complaint until management identifies him as useful for a different purpose: quietly flagging coworkers who might be worth removing. Eager to please his superiors, he volunteers for reassignment to the Palazzina Laf, a building where employees the company wants out are sent to sit through empty shifts with no actual work to do. Caterino expects an easy posting and instead finds himself inside a slow, deliberate machine designed to wear people down through boredom, isolation, and humiliation until they quit on their own. As he watches colleagues unravel around him, the line between observer and participant starts to disappear, and Caterino has to reckon with what he's helped build.
Cast & crew
Michele Riondino both directs and stars as Caterino, playing him with a wary, deferential energy that makes his gradual complicity feel uncomfortably plausible rather than villainous. Elio Germano appears as one of the workers sidelined inside the building, and Vanessa Scalera and Anna Ferruzzo round out a cast of familiar Italian screen actors who ground the film's institutional cruelty in specific, human faces rather than abstraction.
Context & significance
Palazzina Laf is based on real events at the Ilva steelworks in Taranto, where a building nicknamed for this practice was reportedly used in the 1990s and 2000s to isolate workers management wanted to push out without formal layoffs. Riondino, an actor making his first feature as director, grew up near the plant and has spoken about the story's roots in local memory rather than distant headlines. The film debuted in 2023 as an Italy-France co-production and was well received on the festival circuit for its restrained, unsensational approach to workplace abuse.
Where & how to watch
Palazzina Laf is available on K-Time with a Farsi dub, so Persian-speaking viewers can follow the film's dialogue-heavy scenes without relying on subtitles. The page itself is free to browse, and watching the film requires only a free K-Time account login, part of a Farsi-first streaming experience built for the diaspora.