LOTTA CONTINUA

Lotta Continua, one of Italy's most important left-wing, extra-parliamentary groups of the time, lasted barely seven years, from 1969 to 1976, but it had a profound effect on Italian culture. The movie, which is loosely based on the book by Aldo Cazzullo, depicts the events from the inside, through the firsthand stories of the men and women who took part in it. Young people who wanted to make a revolution. An intimate, compassionate story, recounted by six protagonists of the time – immersed in a place without any space-time reference points, as though in a confessional – that portrays a great experience of struggle and reflection, of sharing and contrasts.

“When Verdiana Bixio proposed I direct a movie about the story of Lotta Continua I knew it would be the first documentary about that political experience that is still so vivid in Italian culture. A story that only lasted seven years but was very intense and too complex. […] We wanted to put ourselves inside the bodies of those young people, we wanted to think with them, see that world with them. Thus, our movie's soundtrack is composed exclusively of songs from movies that were released between 1969 and 1976, the years that Lotta Continua existed. It's the music they listened to when they went to the movies. This documentary was a collective effort, the result of a heterogeneous work group that was united by the idea of giving today's young people (who might want to make a revolution of their own) a mirror in which they can discover themselves.”