Plot

An Italian epic that follows the lives of two brothers from the 1960s to the 2000s.

Nicola and Matteo Carati are two brothers of Rome, who live the years from 1966 to 2000 and all the events which have signed this period. They begin their adventure by helping Giorgia, a young girl confined in an asylum. Then, after the flood of Florence, Nicola meets Giulia, a talented piano player with a dangerous sympathy for the BR. Matteo, a rebel spirit entered in the police, will find the optimistic photographer Mirella. These four characters and many others will cross the years of terrorism and Tangentopoli.—ltj36

Chronological, from 1963 until 2003, moving around Italy, from Rome to the floods of Florence in 1966, student unrest in Turin, Mafia murders in Palermo, chance in Milan, plus two trips to Norway. Brothers Matteo and Nicola, of opposite temperament, try to free Giorgia, a teen, from a mental institution: their failure leads Nicola into psychiatry and Matteo to the police. In Florence, Nicola meets Giulia, a musician and leftist whose Red Brigade ties drive them apart after they have a child. In Palermo, Matteo meets Mirella, a photographer; they connect again in Rome. The film explores love, family, friendship, politics, mental illness, tragedy, and opportunities to forgive and to heal.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>

Spanning four decades, from the chaotic 1960s to the present, this passionate epic follows two Italian brothers through some of the most tumultuous events of recent Italian history. In a final period of hopeful innocence, free-spirited Nicola travels the world and settles for a life as a successful psychiatrist, while his tragically introverted and idealist brother Matteo joins the Italian police with the hope of righting society's wrongs. Their politics and personalities are inextricably intertwined as the world around them violently shifts and they are pushed together and pulled apart by the tides of history and their own divergent dreams.—bondish