The Great Ambition
The Great Ambition is a 2024 Italian biographical drama film directed by Andrea Segre. It stars Elio Germano as politician Enrico Berlinguer, who led the Italian Communist Party from 1972 to 1984. It opened the 19th [Rome Film Festival] on 16 October 2024 and received a theatrical release in Italy on 31 October 2024.
Plot
Defying the dogmas of the Cold War and a world divided in two, Berlinguer and the PCI tried for five years to gain power, opening a period of dialogue with the Christian Democracy and coming close to changing history with the Historic Compromise. From 1973, when he escaped an attack in Sofia by the Bulgarian secret service, through electoral campaigns and trips to Moscow, the front pages of newspapers around the world and risky relationships with those in power, up to the assassination in 1978 of the president of the Christian Democracy Aldo Moro. The story of a man and a people for whom life and politics, private and collective, were inextricably linked.Cast
- Elio Germano as Enrico Berlinguer
- as Giulio Andreotti
- Roberto Citran as Aldo Moro
- Elena Radonicich as Letizia Laurenti
- Fabrizia Sacchi as Nilde Iotti
- Paolo Calabresi as
- Andrea Pennacchi as
- Giorgio Tirabassi as Alberto Menichelli
- Stefano Abbati as Umberto Terracini
- Francesco Acquaroli as Pietro Ingrao
- as
- Nikolay Danchev as Leonid Brezhnev
- as Todor Zhivkov
- Luca Lazzareschi as Alessandro Natta
- Lucio Patanè as
- Alice Airoldi as Bianca Berlinguer
Production
Principal photography began in November 2023. The film was shot in Rome, as well as Sassari and Porto Torres in Sardinia.Release
A promotional still from the film was released on 18 July 2024. The film opened the 19th Rome Film Festival on 16 October 2024, and received a theatrical release in Italy on 31 October 2024.Fandango acquired the international distribution rights to the film on 5 September 2024. In March 2025, the film was acquired by Nour Films in France; Filmin in Spain; Risi in Portugal; Cineworx in Switzerland; in Brazil; Weird Wave in Greece; Palace in Australia and New Zealand; and in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovia, Montenegro, Slovenia, and North Macedonia.