Vincere

2009/Italy/France/ 128mins/Dir. Marco Bellocchio
Cast: Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Filippo Timi, Corrado Invernizzi.

There is a secret in the life of Mussolini: a wife and a son, Benito Albino, who was born, acknowledged and then denied. The secret bears a name: Ida Dalser. It is a dark page in history, one ignored in the official biography of the Duce.

When Ida more meets Mussolini in Milan, he is the editor of Avanti! and an ardent Socialist who intends to guide the masses towards an anti-clerical, anti-monarchical, socially emancipated future. Ida truly believes in him and his ideas, and in order to finance Il Popolo d’Italia, a newspaper he has founded and the nucleus of the forthcoming Fascist Party, she sells everything she has. But when WWI erupts, Benito Mussolini enrolls in the Army and disappears. Ida begins a quest to find her husband and discover the truth about his new life.