Maurizio Ferrara

Italian director Giuseppe DeSantis was the creative force behind this Yugoslavian "slice of life" drama. The title translates as The Year-Long Road and, accordingly, the plot concerns a voluntary joint effort to construct a highway. Naturally, this animosity wreaks havoc on the various Romeo-Juliet romances in the region.

Two Italians, Sandro and Lorenzo, are traveling through the Soviet Union. Lorenzo has been to Russia before and now, accompanying his friend, gives him the necessary explanations. This peculiar technique allows us to see the USSR through the eyes of a progressively thinking Italian, to familiarize through Western countries with the grandiose transformations that were taking place at that time in the Soviet country, with the most essential features of the socialist reality, with the life of people, with the achievements of science, technology, culture and art.