Mario Schiano

After a fateful encounter in the summer of 1966, the lifepaths of two brothers from a middle-class Roman family diverge, intersecting with some of the most significant events of postwar Italian history in the following decades.

A family saga set in Italy which chronicles the life of a middle-class family. It explores the relationship between two brothers Nicola and Matteo as their life paths separate during youth, encompassing major political and social events in post–World War II Italian history.

Nanni Moretti recounts in his diary three slice-of-life stories marked by a dry, ironic gaze: in the first, he rides his Vespa through a deserted, sun-drenched summertime Rome; in the second, he visits a reclusive writer friend on an island, who ropes him into an impromptu journey between islets in search of quiet; and in the last, he finds himself grappling with an unknown illness.

Michele is an MP for the Italian Communist Party who loses his memory in a car crash, though hardly anyone around him seems to notice. During a crucial water polo match on the eve of election day, he gradually begins to remember his past life, revealing a man whose personal and political identity crisis mirrors that of Italian communism itself.

The film documents the trade union battle of the workers of the Apollon printing house in Rome, occupied for a few months after the management decided to fire all the personnel and sell the land on which the factory was standing. In the form of a docu-fiction, the events of the long occupation are reconstructed, which began on June 4, 1967 and ended in December 1968. The workers play themselves and various other roles, but they are also co-authors of the film, which is not a simple chronicle of events, but an analytical reading of the reality of the factory, the story of the conquest of instruments of struggle and democracy, with the indication of strategies of attack on the bosses' power. The narrative voice of Gian Maria Volonté gives continuity to the story and comments on the events.

A selection of deleted scenes from Nanni Moretti's 1998 film "Aprile".