Synopsis
Welcome Mr. President! (Benvenuto Presidente!, 2013) is an Italian comedy from Riccardo Milani that you can watch online on iFILM. Peppino lives in a tiny mountain village, scrapes by as a library clerk, fishes for fun and stages amateur plays for his neighbours. His full name happens to be Giuseppe Garibaldi, the same as one of Italy's founding heroes.
That coincidence, plus a parliament too gridlocked to agree on anyone, lands him in the job of his life: through a bureaucratic mix-up, Peppino is accidentally elected President of the Italian Republic. The plain-spoken oddball from nowhere suddenly wakes up in the Quirinal Palace. Claudio Bisio plays him as a man who first wants to bolt, then sees how many crooks run the place and decides to stay and shake things up. The buttoned-up official Janis Clementi, played by Kasia Smutniak, fights a losing battle to keep his unpredictable instincts within protocol.
Milani aims a gentle satire at Italian politics: ordinary common sense versus a cynical machine. There's no venom here, just warmth for a simple soul who turns out more honest than anyone around him. A good fit if you like soft European comedies where naivety pricks the powerful. Stream Welcome Mr. President! (2013) online on iFILM.
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