I Had a Dream (excerpt) A film byClaudia Tosi

The story of Manuela, MP, and Daniela, a city council member, told intimately and in full without ever ceasing to maintain an elegant air of respect, fits into the context (and this is the challenge for the protagonists at the beginning of their journey) of an Italy where "Berlusconism," an attitude governed by the "total disinterest of the Other," which has "ruined" the country and is expressed in shameless sexism, continues to creep in violent insulting messages sent to the elected official on Facebook, the harmless words of ordinary citizens and the jokes made by a party colleague about women’s manners, who acts as if it’s nothing. Because it’s a matter of fact that women aren’t allowed to act in the same disrespectful manner. And so, they keep their calm.

Because it’s a matter of fact that women aren’t allowed to act in the same disrespectful manner. And so, they keep their calm.

The fact that Manuela and Daniela are forced to fight for women’s rights in this notoriously patriarchal society is inevitable, but Tosi’s film also shows how, whether they like it or not, we often tend to “reduce” them to this one mission alone, and to one-off actions in general, when what they really want is to implement an overall project for the country, a dynamic which we experience here in immense frustration. Indeed, throughout this political journey (the initial momentum, the throes of the campaign, the innumerable obstacles…), we watch as the protagonists, still being filmed today, venture to a cinema to comment on footage recorded ten years earlier in the light of their total and absolute despondency.