Scherza con i fanti

A tragicomic tour of Italy's recent history, and at the same time, a song of peace, the film is a backward glance that takes in over a hundred years, from the Unification of Italy to the present, to illustrate the rocky and often ironic relationship Italians have with the military and power in general. The film combines invaluable stock footage from the Istituto Luce Archives with marvelous folk songs and four diaries kept by: a soldier for the Kingdom of Italy in the 1800s, a fighter in Ethiopia in 1935, a female resistance fighter during World War II, and a sergeant in the Italian Navy in the Kosovo. The result is private stories and the collective memory of a people who, with two millennia of war under their belt, should have a few tips about world peace. (Venice International Film Festival)