Il sol dell'avvenire

IL SOL DELL’AVVENIRE is a complex, multi-layered film by Nanni Moretti about his past work and present-day political life in Italy. Moretti’s new alter ego is named Giovanni, a left-wing filmmaker who is suffering at home and at work in equal measure. While his screenwriter wife is summoning up the courage to leave him, he himself feels like a powerless witness of the degradation of the Italian cinema he was once so proud of. The utopian film he’s shooting, set in a popular district of Rome during 1956 the Hungarian Uprising, is halted for lack of funds and scorned by the streaming platform investors who could save it. Perhaps Giovanni is an echo of Michele Apicella, that other famous Moretti alter ego who reached the end of the road with his masterpiece PALOMBELLA ROSSA. He still sings Franco Battiato songs behind the wheel, swims in a pool and there’s even a circus called Budavari. Does Moretti at age 70 dream of who he was at 35, thus risking getting caught up in his own nostalgia? Did he ever accept the fact that people are not what he wanted them to be? Nevertheless, he hasn’t abandoned his ideals in a country now governed by the extreme right, even if defeat seems near. (Francisco Ferreira)

Nanni Moretti: IO SONO UN AUTARCHICO (1976), ECCE BOMBO (1978), SOGNI D’ORO (1981), BIANCA (1984), LA MESSA È FINITA (1985), PALOMBELLA ROSSA (1989), CARO DIARIO (1993), APRILE (1998), LA STANZA DEL FIGLIO (2001), IL CAIMANO (2006), HABEMUS PAPAM (2011), MIA MADRE (2015), TRE PIANI (2021)