Ecce bombo

The film follows Michele, a university student, and his relationship with his parents and sister Valentina, with women and with his social circle. We see him and his friends chatting at bar tables or speaking from the microphones of a private radio; we witness the discussions sparked in the family by Valentina’s decision to join the occupation of her school, Michele’s bizarre courtship of a friend’s girlfriend, the attempts of the young man and his mates to help a schizophrenic woman, Olga, overcome her illness, an extravagant term exam and collective sessions of self-awareness and self-confession. Summer arrives and Michele finds himself alone and bored. Then his friends return from the holidays and everything starts again as before. One evening they all decide to go to Olga together: except Michele, all the others get lost along the way, distracted by futile entertainment.

It was a very limited portion of reality that I was staging. Because not only were they young, but they were young from a particular social background, urban lower-middle class. Not only that, young, middle class, from a city, but from the left. Not just the left, but the far left. Not just from the far left, but people who had stopped engaging in active politics. [...] I remember a private screening, the film hadn’t been released yet, it was me, the editor and my producer. The film was very dramatic, it wasn’t funny. [...] I was convinced that I had made a painful film for few. Then the film came out and I found out that I had made a comedy film for everyone.

PRODUCTION: Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia
via Tuscolana 1524
00173, Roma, Italia
Tel. 39 06722941
diffusioneculturale@fondazionecsc.it

ITALIAN DISTRIBUTION: Sacher Film – Nanni Moretti
via Raffaello Giovagnoli 6
00152, Roma, Italia
sacherfilm@sacherfilm.eu

PRESS OFFICE: Mario Sesti - Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia
via Tuscolana 1524
00173, Roma, Italia
Tel ?
mario.sesti@gmail.com