Jaime P. Cousido

In the aftermath of Stalin’s death, three Italian communists engage in a trip to the Soviet Union to challenge their utopia with an 8mm camera. In 1957, Sauro, Luigi and Enzo all live in Alfonsine, a small town in Italy ruled like a miniature Soviet Union by the Italian Communist Party. As many communists in the West, they dream of the Soviet Union, and hope for the great Revolution. But with the wind of reform and self-criticism blowing through the Eastern Bloc after the death of Stalin the image of the Soviet Union as the workers’ paradise begins to crumble. They therefore decide to travel to the USSR to find out what is true and what is false in this supposed land of milk and honey. They film their entire journey with their 8mm camera. Through this invaluable personal archive, our film tells the hopes, disappointments and challenges of three young men faced with the reality of what seemed to be a utopia come true.

The Rostom is an overnight shelter for the homeless, located on the outskirts of Bologna. It appears like a ghostly moon base in the middle of the countryside, where beams of neon light draw the profiles of insomniacs, who in the middle of the night get up and go out for a smoke or a chat. Weaving the threads of their stories is David, an Englishman who has been wandering the world for seven years and has landed at Rostom exhausted and eager to get back on his feet and tell his story