GOOD MORNING, NIGHT (Buongiorno, Notte)

Marco Bellocchio’s powerful film GOOD MORNING, NIGHT is based on the true story of the kidnapping of Italy’s former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978. Bellocchio’s screenplay won the Prize for Outstanding Individual Contribution at the Venice Film Festival and the film won the European Film Academy Fipresci Prize in 2003. Rome, 1978. A young woman, Chiara (Maya Sansa) moves into a large apart- ment in a quiet suburb with her husband, Ernesto (played the director’s son, Pier Giorgio Bellocchio). She works as a librarian for the government and has a colleague, Enzo. He asks her about her private life but she gives him no straight answers… in secret she is a member of the extreme terrorist underground, the Red Brigade. Her quiet life masks one of the biggest kidnaps in Italian history, the kidnap of Aldo Moro, who is imprisoned in the apartment. GOOD MORNING, NIGHT does not explore nor judges the motives of the terrorists. Even though Bellocchio does not approve of their acts, he focuses on one single aspect of the story that has held Italy in its grip for 55 days: the life they share with their prisoner, who is held in a small room before his assassination. The tensions between the kidnappers grow and Chiara, who spies on Moro, has difficulties coping with her double life, dreaming of a third life in which Moro could go free. The only person who is calm is Moro, who seems to be much more in control than the terrorists who slowly become prisoners of their situation.

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