Andrea Segre’s The Great Ambition, the opening film of the Rome Film Festival, tells the story of how the Italian Communist Party came close to governing Italy.
It focuses on Italian politician Enrico Berlinguer, who ran the Communist Party when it reached its peak of popularity in the 1970s. His great ambition was to achieve a democratic path to communism, which meant severing his Party’s ties with Moscow.
Leading the film as Berlinguer is Elio Germano, winner of the best actor prize at the 2020 Berlinale for Hidden Away and at Cannes in 2010 for Our Life. The Great Ambition is co-written by Segre and his regular collaborator Marco Pettenello. Segre’s credits include 2021’s Welcome Venice, which played in Venice’s Giornate degli Autori sidebar, and 2011’s Shun Li And The Poet which debuted in Venice Days.
The €6m film is produced by Gregorio Paonessa and Marta Donzelli’s Vivo Film and Jolefilm, which makes all Segre’s fiction films, together with Rai Cinema, and in co-production with Belgium’s Tarantula and Bulgaria’s Agitprop. Fandango is handling international sales. It is being released in Italy by Lucky Red on October 31 in over 250 cinemas.
Why did you chose to tell this story about the Italian Communist party during Enrico Berlinguer’s leadership? What is special about this period?
On the one hand, this is the story of a collective dream, dreamed by a multitude of people who dedicated their lives to the idea that it was possible to build a better future. Today’s politically engaged youth is advocating for a change in order to save humanity, but they’re not dreaming of anything. On the other hand, the story of the Italian Communist Party is an untold one. It was different from Eastern European communism because it was democratic, and different from other Western European communist parties because it wasn’t tied to the Soviet Union.
How did the production come together?
First, I made sure I had onboard Marco Pettenello, my co-writer, and Elio Germano, whose first reaction was: ‘Do you realise what you are asking me?’ because Berlinguer is such a beloved icon in Italy. Then Vivo Film and Jolefilm were my first destinations, and with them, we started gathering funds. Rai Cinema came on board, providing 30% of the budget, and then there were the Italian public funds.
Since the first ten minutes are set in Bulgaria, we explored a co-production and found that the largest conference venue in the Culture Palace of Sofia was built by Soviet architects, thus very similar to the Kremlin. This allowed us to shoot the Communist Parties’ Congress there. The Belgian part came because I chose Benoit Dervaux as my cinematographer, and Vivo Film had already worked with Tarantula on Nico, 1988 and Miss Marx, making them a natural partner. Plus, the Lazio Film Commission has a dedicated fund for companies from Lazio that want to build an international co-production.
Did it take long to make all this happen?
What took a long time was gathering the right knowledge on the subject. For two years I studied Berlinguer’s memoirs and papers from the Communist Party archives. I also spoke to his family and people who knew him or worked with him. I even rewatched two films: Milk and Malcolm X. Both deal with real political figures who spoke about issues still unresolved, and both have a lot of real footage, as does The Great Ambition.
Towards the end we see real footage of Federico Fellini, Marcello Mastroianni, Monica Vitti, Michelangelo Antonioni and Ettore Scola at Berlinguer’s funeral. Why did you choose to include the footage of these icons of Italian cinema?
In Bulgaria I discovered that the best way to explain the difference between our types of communism was to say that [the Italian Communist Party] was Fellini’s party. It had the endorsement of the highbrow cultural elite, which is surprising if you come from a country that used to be in the Soviet orbit.
Do you feel the budget was right for a period film?
This is a peculiar period film – a political one. Many scenes are set in living rooms and offices. Apart from some moments outside with the people, a politician’s life is mostly indoors. Of course, there’s always room for more money, but I feel we had the correct budget for a careful film. I think limitations are a blessing. We’ve seen many films go awry because of high budgets. Having a little less than you need keeps everyone on edge and attentive.
Your filmography mostly comprises documentaries. Do you find them easier to produce?
A documentary is easier to kickstart. Sometimes, you need to begin shooting right away because something is happening, so I created Zalab, a creative laboratory with some friends, which gives me the ability to grab a camera and shoot with a small crew almost immediately. But documentaries are hard to sell. A fiction film is much easier to sell but it has bigger budgets so is tougher to put together.
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