The Great Ambition

Elio Germano delivers a standout performance as Enrico Berlinguer in this meticulous, intelligent biopic of a man for whom life and politics, private and collective, were inextricably linked. Italy, 1970s. Enrico Berlinguer is the Secretary of the most important Communist party in the western world, with over one million seven hundred thousand card-holding members and more than twelve million voters, united by the great ambition of achieving socialism within a democracy. Challenging the dogmas of the Cold War and a world divided in two, Berlinguer and the Italian Communist Party (PCI) sought for five years to come to power, opening a season of dialogue with the Christian Democracy and almost changing history. Covering the period from 1973 when Berlinguer escapes an assassination attempt by the Bulgarian secret services in Sofia, makes it through election campaigns and trips to Moscow, onto the front pages of newspapers worldwide and holds a risky relationship with power, until 1978, The Great Ambition is a compelling portrait of the popular leader at his peak.

Born in 1976, Andrea Segre is a director and screenwriter of films and documentaries, who holds a PhD in Sociology of Communication and Cultural Processes and is a founding member of Zalab, an independent and social cinema production and distribution hub. His films include Shun Li and the Poet (2011) and First Snowfall (2013), while his documentaries include The Green Blood (2010) and Venetian Molecules (2021).