A Brighter Tomorrow

A Roman director is making a period film set in Rome in 1956. That year Hungary rose against Soviet domination, tanks entered Budapest and the Italian Communist Party backed the intervention, which was the breaking point for Italian intellectuals. In the film within the film a Hungarian circus out of Fellini arrives in the capital. Outside it, the director's marriage is ending, his producer is going bankrupt and he does not know how to finish his own picture. Nanni Moretti directed and plays the director. The most discussed scene is a meeting. Moretti's director argues with a Netflix executive who wants the story established in two minutes and answers back: what about the first ten, what about the first thirty-seven. The executives call his screenplay a slow burner that does not detonate and say it lacks a moment of shock. Moretti kept it up off screen too. At Cannes he criticised the platforms and said filmmakers bow to them. It competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Who it is for: viewers who like Moretti and films about making films. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a tidy structure. The film takes its own untidiness as a subject and often refuses to tie its strands together.