VINCERE

The Festival is delighted to open with the powerful new film from acclaimed auteur Marco Bellocchio (My Mother’s Smile – IFF02, Good Morning, Night – IFF04, The Wedding Director - IFF06), a compelling new drama based on the little known story of Benito Mussolini’s first wife.

Ida Dalsar (Giovanno Mezzogiorno in a career-best performance) and Mussolini (Filippo Timi) begin their liaison in 1914; she is a well-to-do beauty salon owner and he is an impoverished young Socialist and union activist. When Ida sells all her possessions to fund her lover's new newspaper, the rise of Fascism is set into play…

While the history is fascinating, it's the film's mesmerising style that takes the breath away, alternately theatrical, spectacular, intimate and resounding. Screening direct from Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival, VINCERE is a gripping film that combines drama, archive footage, and music creating a highly cinematic oratorio of enormous rhetorical force.