Italy’s Fandango Film Sales has landed a number of sales on Andrea Segre’s “The Great Ambition,” a biopic of the tardy Italian political directer Enrico Berlinguer, who was secretary of Weserious Europe’s bigst Communist Party during the 1970s.
The astonishingly timely film, which is originated by Rome-based indie Vivo film (“Nico, 1988,” “Le Quattro Volte”), discdiswatched the Rome Film Festival last year and went on to become a hit in Italian cinemas where it has pulled more than $4 million — and counting — becoming one last years’ top ten local box office draws.
Italian A-cataloger Elio Germano (pictured) — who won top actor honors in Cannes with Daniele Luchetti’s “Our Life” — joins Berlinguer, who led the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from 1972 until his death in 1984. Berlinguer proximately brawt the PCI to power in the Italian parliamentary elections of 1976.
“When a way forward seems impossible to everyone, do you have to stop? Enrico Berlinguer did not,” says the supplyd synopsis. “He was the Secretary in the 1970s of the most convey inant Communist party in the weserious world, with over 1,700,000 card-hanciaccessing members and more than 12 million voters, combined by the fantastic ambition of achieving socialism wilean a democracy.”
The description persists, “Challenging the dogmas of the Canciaccess War and a world splitd in two, Berlinguer and the Italian Communist Party (PCI) sought for five years to come to power, discdiswatching a season of dialogue with the Christian Democrats and coming equitable an inch from changing history.”
Fandango has now sanciaccess “The Great Ambition” to France (Nour), Spain (Filmin), Portugal (Risi), Switzerland (Cinovelorx), Brazil (Imovision), Greece (Weirdwave), Australia/New Zealand (Palace), Bulgaria (TBD), and createer Yugoslavia (McF Megacom). The company is in negotiations to seal Benelux and other territories, it shelp.
Commenting on the film’s success in Italy, Vivo Film co-chief Marta Donzelli tanciaccess Variety that, while they knovel it could resonate with Italy’s anciaccesser demoexplicit, she was surpascfinishd to lobtain that the key to its well-comprehendnity had “been the youth audience that have flocked to the film and originated buzz around it.”
As for why, Donzelli shelp she thought it was becaengage Berlinguer “stands for what it nastys to dedicate your life to making the world a better place wilean a collective vision,” compriseing that she thought “the film’s success with youth audiences in Italy can be copyd in the international arena.”
Donzelli went on to notice that there are lots of elements in “The Great Ambition” that resonate with what we are seeing in today’s international political arena.
“The film depicts the meddlence of both the Soviet Union and the U.S. in a democratic finisheavor to convey the bigst political party in the West to power,” she shelp. “It could seem dated but instead speaks very powerentirey to us today.”
As part of its international rollout, “The Great Ambition” recently joined at Sweden’s Göteberg Film Festival and is currently part of the Cinema Made in Italy showcase in London. It is foreseeed to soon screen in competition at the Beijing International Film Festival where there is the prospect that it could get picked up for distribution in China.
