Film Review: "Rose Island" ("L'incredibile storia dell'Isola delle Rose") (2020).

"Based on the incredible true story". This is Rose Island (L'incredibile storia dell'Isola delle Rose). This Italian comedy-drama film directed by Sydney Sibilia and written by Sibilia and Francesca Manieri. An idealistic engineer builds his own island off the Italian coast and declares it a nation, drawing the world’s attention. Values are tested when the Italian Government declares him an enemy, but to change the world risks must be taken. 

In 1967, the short-lived micronation on a man-made platform in the Adriatic Sea, 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) off the coast of the province of Rimini, Italy, The Republic of Rose Island (Esperanto: Respubliko de la Insulo de la Rozoj; Italian: Repubblica dell'Isola delle Rose) was built. It was built by the Italian engineer Giorgio Rosa, who made himself its president and declared it an independent state on 1 May 1968. Rose Island had its own government, currency, post office, and commercial establishments, and the official language was Esperanto. However, it was never formally recognized as a sovereign state by any country of the world. Viewed by the Italian government as a ploy by Rosa to raise money from tourists while avoiding national taxation, Rose Island was occupied by the Italian police forces on 26 June 1968, subject to naval blockade, and eventually demolished in February 1969. Since the first decade of the 2000s, Rose Island's history has been the subject of documentary research and rediscoveries based on the utopian aspect of its genesis.

The film stars Elio Germano, Matilda De Angelis, Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Luca Zingaretti, François Cluzet, and Tom Wlaschiha. Thanks to the performances of the cast, the film is a mesmerizing and engaging work of art about the achievement of a wild-eyed Italian dreamer in the exotic oceanic world of the Adriatic Sea.

The film's account, with Germano as Rosa, certainly doesn't stake out new territory, but its tale of mavericks pursuing their dream and defying stuffy politicians is lively enough. Sibilia and co-writer Francesca Manieri successfully mix whimsy and pathos to give us something truly inspiring. It's a classic underdog story that insists, and in some ways proves, that all you really need in life is the will to make a difference and the stubbornness to not be told no A kind of Italian Fitzcarraldo, Rose Island persuasively argues that dreamers can move mountains. It offers little in the way of surprises, but it's hard not to be won over by its small-scale delights. Sibilia's film confirms that dreamers and their obsessions can give us otherwise unimaginable moments of pure beauty. The film may have been intended as an ironic comment on the absurdity of human ambition, but it's an irony that works in Sibilia's favour. If you have a dream, the only way to accomplish it is to face it head on. If your dream requires you to build an island and make it an independent nation of its own, do it. So says Sibilia in this bizarre but captivating film.

Simon says Rose Island (L'incredibile storia dell'Isola delle Rose) receives: