Thirteen Italian actors, many just starting out, for more than two months thrown on a Greek island to deal with a sumptuous Hollywood production. The movie being filmed is “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” by John Madden (Oscar winner for “Shakespeare in Love”). Starring: Nicolas Cage, Penelope Cruz and John Hurt. The young actors are astonished and happy, but also increasingly conscious to be there to represent a coral role of the purest cliché of Italians seen by Anglo-Saxons. At the same time, this stereotype isn’t a great deal to the actors that actually realize how, outside of the set, they do correspond to the image that Americans have of them. The actors constantly swing from founding gratification to hidden frustrations, from wild fun to homesickness. Italian Soldiers is the picture of a youth adventure as great as an unrepeatable season is. In the documentary historical memory is recalled discovering an Oscar winner that swears he’s Italian because “he talks with his hands, he likes to eat and he dreams every night of the mass murder victims”, and also to discover young Italian people that, in front of their war memorial, innocently admit to feel that recent past as unfamiliar and long gone. On the background, real Greek soldiers wearing old Italian uniforms and being walk-ons, a great deal of equipment, endless “spaghettate” (meals based on spaghetti) and endless days not knowing what you’re doing nor why.

Press review

RUNTIME: 56 min.

YEAR: 2001
DIRECTOR AND DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: 
Francesco Cabras
EDITING: Alberto Molinari, Francesco Struffi
PRODUCTER: Ganga