Il grande sogno

A lawman finds himself caught up in the idealism and chaos of the Sixties in this drama from director Michele Placido, inspired by the Rome student uprisings of 1968. Nicola (Riccardo Scamarcio) is a policeman in his mid-twenties who also has a passion for acting. The police are concerned about a group of student radicals who are becoming a major presence on the University of Rome campus, and Nicola is given a special undercover assignment -- posing as a leftist student, he's to become part of the group and report back about their activities. Libero (Luca Argentero) is the passionate and charismatic leader of the cell, while Laura (Jasmine Trinca) is one of their key strategists. Though Libero has a girlfriend, he's clearly infatuated with Laura, but her staunchly Catholic family has fixed her up with a boy who meets their standards but she can't imagine having to marry. Nicola, who is something of a ladies' man, thinks Laura is quite attractive, and his superiors urge him to pursue a relationship with her, but the more time he spends with her and the rest of the group, the more he comes to believe in their cause and begins to question his life as a cop. Il Grande Sogno (aka The Big Dream) was an official selection at the 2009 Venice International Film Festival.