Screenings: 24 October 2026 Saturday 18:30* / 17 November 2026 Tuesday 20:00 / 27 December 2026 Sunday 18:30
 

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Screenplay: Bernardo Bertolucci (inspired by Stendhal’s novel The Charterhouse of Parma)
Cast: Adriana Asti, Francesco Barilli, Allen Midgette, Morando Morandini
 

Italy / 1964 / 112 min. / Black and white / DCP / Italian / Turkish subtitles
 

An early masterpiece made by Bernardo Bertolucci, one of Italy’s most important filmmakers, at just 22, Before the Revolution follows a young Marxist torn between his search for a political identity and the bourgeois life he cannot relinquish. Although he rebels against his family’s values, Fabrizio hesitates to abandon bourgeois comfort and is drawn into the unsettling intimacy of an affair with his aunt. Distinguished by Ennio Morricone’s music and its dense dialogue, the film was shot in the director’s hometown of Parma and bears unmistakably personal touches. In an interview, he described it as “…a kind of inner purification rite through which I tried to burn all my bridges with childhood and adolescence.”
 

* The screening on 24 October will be introduced by Il Cinema Ritrovato festival coordinator Guy Karim Borlée.

* We thank Il Cinema Ritrovato and Cineteca di Bologna for their contributions.