The Best of Youth

A long film that tells forty years of Italy through two brothers. It begins in 1966. Nicola and Matteo are studying medicine in Rome. At a psychiatric clinic Matteo meets a patient named Giorgia and takes her out of it. That event separates their lives. Nicola becomes a psychiatrist and joins the movement to close the asylums. Matteo leaves university, enlists and becomes a policeman. The narrative spreads across forty years: the flood in Florence, strikes at the car factories, the political violence of the 1970s, the mafia trials and the 1990s. The method is to keep the large events in the background. History always passes at the edge of a family meal, a move to a new flat or a trip to a hospital. It runs six hours. It was in fact made as a four-part television series; after festival screenings it was shown in cinemas in two parts. Luigi Lo Cascio plays Nicola and Alessio Boni plays Matteo. Adriana Asti, Sonia Bergamasco and Maya Sansa are in the cast. Marco Tullio Giordana directed. The film won a prize in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. A comprehensive production for anyone who likes family sagas and recent history. For a viewer who wants something short, it runs six hours and the pace is deliberately calm.