The ambition of Enrico Berlinguer is told in the film at the festival, now in its 19th edition. The festival opened with a film by director Andrea Segre dedicated to the Sardinian politician and militant, among the most loved of all time.

The 19th Rome Film Festival opened with “The Great Ambition”: a film dedicated to Berlinguer, which tells his story, his events, his courage, and his steadfastness, but also a more intimate and familiar side. For the first time, Italian cinema tells the story of Enrico Berlinguer.  The film is a journey that begins with Enrico Berlinguer, secretary of the most important communist party in the Western world in the 1970s and continues with the ambition, or rather “the great ambition”, of achieving socialism in democracy. Challenging the dogmas of the Cold War and a world divided in two, Berlinguer and the PCI attempted to go into government for five years, opening up a season of dialogue with the Christian Democrats and coming one step away from changing history.

From 1973, when he escaped an attack by Bulgarian intelligence in Sofia, through electoral campaigns and trips to Moscow, the covers of newspapers around the world and risky relationships with those in power, up until the assassination in 1978 of the President of the Christian Democrats Aldo Moro: the story of a man and a people for whom life and politics, private and collective, were inextricably linked. In the years in which Enrico Berlinguer, with his Sardinian accent, the cigarette permanently in his mouth and his eloquent silence, put the good of the community at the centre of his life, coming one step away from changing history. Berlinguer, representing the PCI and challenging the dogmas of the Cold War, of a world divided in two, attempted, for several years and together with his collaborators, to go into government, opening up to a season of dialogue with Aldo Moro and the Christian Democrats, and coming one step away from changing history. Berlinguer is the story of a precise historical moment – the five years between 1973 and 1978 – in which Berlinguer, a determined man and politician, did everything he could to affirm social, cultural and democratic change. “Whatever happens in life must move forward”, says Enrico Berlinguer to his daughter Maria in a scene from Andrea Segre’s film.

Taking on his role is a masterful Elio Germano. The film isn’t just Berlinguei; it’s all those who often sit at the decision-making table with him. Characters who, although all in small moments, become key to rereading and rediscovering the past by comparing it with today (or with the possibility of a tomorrow). The film’s ambition reminds many – and those who did not experience that historical period – that there was a moment in Italy when democracy was defended with passion, loyalty, perseverance, and participation by characters who, like Berlinguer, carried forward a romantic dimension of politics.

“I had read a book by Piero Ruzzante on Berlinguer’s last days, and it occurred to me that it was an idea I already had in my head”, says director Andrea Segre. “It was incredible that Italian cinema had not yet told Berlinguer and that third of Italians who lived around the PCI.”

“Today, we talk a lot about leaders, and we don’t have a leader. But are we sure that the answer lies in the leader? First, Berlinguer was a secretary, which is a very important semantic difference. Anyone who told us about him spoke of his disturbing silence, a person who made others talk a lot, listened and inferred,” Germano said.

In the cast, alongside Elio Germano, we find Stefano Abbati (Umberto Terracini), Francesco Acquaroli (Pietro Ingrao), Paolo Calabresi (Ugo Pecchioli), Roberto Citran (Aldo Moro), Pierluigi Corallo (Antonio Tatò), Nikolay Danchev (Leonid Brežnev), Svetoslav Dobrev (Todor Živkov), Luca Lazzareschi (Alessandro Natta), Lucio Patanè (Gianni Cervetti), Andrea Pennacchi (Luciano Barca), Paolo Pierobon (Giulio Andreotti), Elena Radonicich (Letizia Laurenti), Fabrizia Sacchi (Nilde Iotti), Giorgio Tirabassi (Alberto Menichelli).

The Great Ambition will be released in theatres on Thursday, 31 October, and distributed by Lucky Red.