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The Biggest Dream (2016) is the cinematic debut of a young Roman director: Michele Vannucci (1987).
The film competes at the Venice Festival in the Horizons section. After the screening, applause and tears, astonishment and clamor. Vannucci is awarded as best debut director at the David di Donatello awards.
We are in the presence of a sort of docu-film as the protagonists, although in a cinematic context, that is, in an acting capacity, almost all play themselves and recount, in the filmic story, events that really happened.
We are in La Rustica, a run-down suburb of Rome-east.
The protagonist of this story is Mirko Frezza (Mirko) who plays, in fact, himself.
Mirko is 40 years old, has a wife, two children, is unemployed, and has just come out of a long 7-year stay kindly offered by the national jails…
He resumes his (criminal) life of always involving drug dealing, it seems there is no way out but then something happens… There is a girl in La Rustica trying to change things and she tells Mirko that it's precisely him they've voted for the neighborhood president election.
Incredulous, he at first seems uninterested but then sees in this role the prospect for the start of a new life and he will give it his all to change things and take the straight path. It will be a titanic endeavor…
The Biggest Dream follows the path traced by three great films, "Roman" like him, released in the last two years: Non essere cattivo, Lo chiamavano Jeeg robot, Suburra. It is therefore no coincidence that Alessandro Borghi, Roman and present in two of the three mentioned films, a young and talented promise of Italian cinema, participates in this film in the role of Boccione, Mirko's brotherly friend.
The Christ-like odyssey of this big man and his interpretation leave a mark. Tall and hefty, long hair and beard, big intense blue eyes. A suffered portrayal by an amateur actor who remakes himself but it is precisely the power of the drama of his real past that gives depth and credibility to his performance. Incredibly, Mirko outshines the excellent professional Borghi who "acts" in this film while Mirko is himself. Paradoxically, it is Borghi who is the weak link in the chain but his lines, his "vaffanculo," will draw more than one laugh.
The film, even with the natural limits of a debut, is interesting also from a technical point of view. Vannucci has his own style, he takes his time, dilates the action, lingers, slows down, then accelerates (the carousel, the chase).
It is an intense, absolutely realistic film, profoundly dramatic, yet here and there you breathe and relax with a joke, with a laugh.
The ending, finally, accompanied by Don Backy's "Canzone," is splendid.
Watch it.
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