Popular media thus acts as a : it convinces the mass audience that a darker, more authentic, "real" form of entertainment exists just out of reach. The media doesn’t show the content—it shows the idea of the content, which is far more profitable.
The ambition of the project paid off in the awards circuit. It took home the 2003 AVN Award for Best Foreign Feature, cementing its place as a milestone in the "Euro-Porn" epic genre.
Director Antonio Adamo, known for his "mega-productions," treated the project with the visual language of a mainstream historical epic. The use of crane shots, sweeping panoramas, and choreographed battle sequences gave the film a sense of "prestige" rarely seen in the genre. Plot and Narrative Structure