Genre: Historical Drama

Language: Italian with English Subtitles

Director: Marco Bellocchio

Cast: Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Filippo Timi, Corrado Invernizzi, Michela Cescon

Released: 2009

Duration: 100 Minutes

Rating: R13 contains violence & sex scenes

Distribution: Palace Films

Cannes Film Festival 2009: Nominee Golden Palm; 2010 David Di Donatello: Best Director, Best Cinematography plus 6 more; 2009 Italian Golden Globes: Winner Best Actress plus 2 more.

There are secrets in the life of Mussolini: namely Benito Albino - son to first wife Ida Dalser, who was born, acknowledged, and then swiftly denied.

It is a dark page in history, one ignored in the official biography of the Duce. When Ida 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, still reeling from a fleeting encounter with him in Trento, truly believes in the man and his ideas.

In order to finance Popolo d’Italia, a newspaper he had founded and the nucleus of the forthcoming Fascist Party, Ida sells everything she has. When the First World War erupts, Benito Mussolini enrols in the army and disappears. When Ida finds him again in a military hospital, he is tended to by Rachele whom he has just married. Ida demands her rights as Mussolini’s true wife and the mother of his first-born son. She is led away by force; physically restrained and tortured for eleven years.  But Ida will not give up without a fight.

While the history is fascinating, it's the film's mesmerising style that takes the breath away, alternately theatrical, spectacular, intimate and resounding. ‘Vincere’ is a gripping film that combines drama, archive footage, and music creating a highly cinematic oratorio of enormous rhetorical force.