All we have is what we are able to dream

Among the Italian films in competition at the 43rd Torino Film Festival in 2025, Il Protagonista (The Lead) stands out. It is the feature debut of Fabrizio Benvenuto, as both screenwriter and director.

It is the story of a young actor - played by a masterful Pierluigi Gigante - who, after years of small, demeaning parts, stumbles on the big chance to play the lead in an unlikely biopic about a tap dancer fallen on hard times.

From the very first scene, the protagonist is always playing a role within a role. We see how long ago he stopped being a person and became a shell that fills up with whatever stories come his way or serve his purpose; a man who keeps losing himself and never feels the need to find himself again, so strong is his hunger to make it, despite everything and everyone.

The characters around him are all secondary, instrumental. In the director’s constant meta-narrative games, it almost seems as if he knows he is part of a fiction - or rather, that he is the fiction itself. So much so that he plays with the camera, pushes it away, holds it back, asks it to stay… constantly breaking the suspension of disbelief.

Life flows over him and he does not notice, lost as he is among countless fictions that will end up severing every tie with reality.

“Chasing fake things you miss the real ones”

These are the words of the last bastion of hope trying to remind the actor that life is not in fiction but right there, in front of his eyes.

And yet Giancarlo Mangiapane - that is the protagonist’s name - does not care about reality at all, because reality is never enough for someone who has chosen the path of art. And so his life remains pure performance. The only voice that speaks to him is the unheeded voice of his shadow, which sometimes appears huge, projected on the walls of the rooms, looking at him without eyes and pointing at him, reminding him of everything he is not.

“Everything is experience”

That is the mantra he repeats obsessively, as a line, while preparing for the most important audition of his life. It perfectly captures the inner engine driving the protagonist’s choices. And in the end, whether the audition goes well or badly hardly matters, because the work’s ultimate message is just one, and it is spoken by Tazio, a homeless man who paints pictures under a bridge in Rome:

“If even one person benefits from your art, then it’s worth it.”

At first glance, Il Protagonista might seem like one of those films about wanting to make a film. But as you discover it, you realise that beneath the risk of cliché there is something more. The dramas and cognitive dissonances of the actor’s figure are a pretext to take the discussion to a more universal level, speaking to everyone who has been handed the curse and the blessing of art. That terrible, beautiful burden that forces the artist to devote a whole life to it, and perhaps more. A film that speaks to those who are not content with reality, and that shouts to everyone who needs to hear it: keep trying, despite all the shadows. Because in the end you realise that all we have is what we are able to dream.