“Vatican Girl” will probe the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi
Netflix has announced the arrival of a new high-profile Italian original documentary series that will probe into a nearly 40-year-old cold case that shook Italian society and made headlines around the world. The series, called “Vatican Girl: The Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi,” will premiere globally on Netflix on October 20.
Written and directed by Mark Lewis, the British director who won an Emmy for the chilling 2019 docuseries “Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer,” looks into the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old girl who disappeared in 1983. The cold case is notorious not only for the mysterious circumstances under which Orlandi disappeared but also for the conspiracy theories that have emerged over the decades to explain what happened to her – including rumors tied to the Mafia and the Vatican.
On June 22, 1983, Orlandi, whose father was a Vatican clerk, left her home in Vatican City to attend a flute lesson. She took part in her music lesson and friends saw her board her bus home shortly after – but she never returned home. Since then, her family and investigators have been unable to solve the mystery, spending the last four decades following tips, leads, and rumors and sifting through prank calls and red herons. A number of theories have been linked back to the Vatican, which has denied accusations of a coverup.
The cold case was revived a few years ago when human bones were found beneath a Vatican building in 2018. The flurry of media attention revived the cold case as investigators and family sought an end to their unanswered questions. Forensic experts were called in to examine the remains, which included a pelvis, part of a skull, and a number of smaller bone fragments, and eventually determined that they did not belong to Orlandi.
“Vatican Girl” will unfold over four episodes and reexamine the case through new interviews with the Orlandi family (mainly with Orlandi’s brother Pietro Orlandi), witnesses, and Italian investigative reporter Andrea Purgatori, who has covered the case since it first broke in 1983. A Netflix statement says that many of the interviewees have never been heard from before and that “these new voices paint a picture of a dark web of secrets hidden at any cost.”
Asia London Palomba
Asia London Palomba is a trilingual freelance journalist from Rome, Italy, currently pursuing her master's in journalism at New York University (NYU). In the past, her work on culture, travel, and history has been published in The Boston Globe, Atlas Obscura, and The Christian Science Monitor. In her free time, Asia enjoys traveling home to Italy to spend time with family and friends, drinking Hugo Spritzes, and making her nonna's homemade cavatelli.