More than eighty years after his disappearance, Benito Mussolini returns with the same ambition: to reconquer the Italian people. But how to achieve this in the modern world?
The question is posed: if the world has changed, have the Italians changed too?
In this film, adapted from Timur Vernes’ book and the film “Look Who’s Back” by David Wnendt (except the returning figure was Adolf Hitler), the Duce is mysteriously catapulted to Earth through the “magic door” of Piazza Vittorio in Rome. He is then discovered by a young filmmaker who mistakes him for a brilliant impersonator and senses a chance for professional success by helping him organize this new “march on Italy,” with the film intended to be broadcast on television.
Comic gags and exhilarating scenes follow, but at its core, the director aims to show the “alliance” between the impact of media and its exploitation through political messaging to captivate crowds.
In fact, the strategies of manipulating consciousness from old regimes are the same ones employed by today’s videocracy.
The final scene—a ride through the center of Rome in an open car with the new version of Mussolini accompanied by a television presenter, greeted by “people” who confuse fiction with reality—conveys the real message of the film: political success increasingly belongs to those who can pass off fiction as reality!
“Sono tornato” is a well-executed film (how can we not highlight the exceptional presence of actor Massimo Popolizio, who looks like a double of the Duce?), a well-crafted satirical farce, but also a powerful reflection on the return of far-right values and intelligently questions the media’s complicity in this.
Ultimately, “Sono tornato” is a film that can both put one at ease and make them laugh.
“Castigat ridendo mores,” this expression aptly applies to Luca Miniero’s film.
