Il toro

Franco is dismissed from a bull-breeding farm without what he is owed. In return he takes the farm's most valuable bull and sets off, planning to get the animal to Hungary and sell it for good money. A former workmate joins him, and the two men head east in a van, skirting a Balkans in the middle of war. The longer the road runs, the more both the idea of the sale and the relationship between them change. Carlo Mazzacurati's film is a road story that looks not at the destination but at what it passes through: an eastern Europe coming apart in the early nineties, closed factories, empty hotels, waits at borders. Diego Abatantuono is in a part with no comedy in it. The film won the Silver Lion at the Venice film festival in 1994, and Roberto Citran took the Volpi Cup for supporting actor. The bull is not a symbol here but a difficult and expensive thing to move.