My Brother Is an Only Child is situated in the town of Latina, a former bastion of Mussolini, and is set in the 1960s and 1970s. The political tensions that reign fall on the fertile soil for the extreme political choices of two brothers from an exemplary working class family that lives in a dwelling much too small and personifies many Italian characteristics. The boys continually battle for their social convictions and personal desires with the harsh reality that surrounds them, but also with each other. Not only do they both believe in their own absolute truth, they also both fall for the same girl. The intellectual Accio, who has left the seminary because there’s no room there for critical questions, throws himself fairly naively into the Fascist party, influenced by an older acquaintance. The slightly older Manrico turns into a Communist idealist who wants to get the workers out of the factories and on to the barricades. The boys are repeatedly confronted with new choices and keep losing sight of each other before clashing again unmercifully. My Brother Is an Only Child won four Donatellos (Italian Oscars), including one for the best actor (Elio Germano as Accio), and for the screenplay, which was written by the director Daniele Luchetti together with Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli, the writers of the famous Italian film epic La meglio gioventù.
