The Successor

One man's journey to confront the cost of his inheritance

The Successor (2015) is an Italian documentary directed by Mattia Epifani that sits at the intersection of personal guilt, historical violence, and the enduring human cost of war.

What The Successor is about

Vito Alfieri Fontana is the former owner of Tecnovar, an Apulian company his father built into a leading manufacturer of anti-personnel and anti-tank landmines. Overwhelmed by a deepening existential crisis, Vito travels from Italy to post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina, where demining teams are still clearing thousands of buried devices. The film follows his journey across a landscape scarred by the Bosnian War, structured around the question that haunts him: how many lives did Tecnovar's output destroy? The director frames this as a road movie as much as a war documentary, balancing Vito's internal conflict against the physical reality of a country that still bears the wounds of conflict.

Director and cast

Mattia Epifani, born in Lecce in 1985, made the film with production support from Apulia Film Commission and Fluid Produzioni, and it is distributed by Deckert Distribution. The film's subject and sole credited cast member, Vito Alfieri Fontana, appears as himself. He is joined on screen by Nijaz Memic, a Bosnian landmine survivor who became his country's first ever competitor at the Winter Paralympic Games, representing Bosnia-Herzegovina in alpine skiing at Vancouver 2010.

Awards and festival run

The film won the Premio Cipputi and the Roberto Gavioli Award for Best Film at the 33rd Torino Film Festival, as well as a Special Prize and a Jury Special Mention at Visioni Italiane, and a Jury Special Mention at the Ischia Film Festival. It screened in international competition at IDFA and at Hot Docs, among more than a dozen other festivals worldwide.

Where to watch The Successor online

The Successor is available to stream on GuideDoc, the documentary streaming platform. Related titles on GuideDoc include A Black Jesus and A Stranger Quest.