The Best of Youth (2003)

The Best of Youth (Italian: La meglio gioventù) is a 2003 Italian romantic drama film directed by Marco Tullio Giordana and written by Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli. A family saga set in Italy from 1966 through 2003, it chronicles the life of the middle-class Carati family, focusing primarily on brothers Matteo (Alessio Boni) and Nicola (Luigi Lo Cascio) as their life paths separate during youth, encompassing major political and social events in post–World War II Italian history.

Originally conceived as a Rai television miniseries, it premiered at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Prize Un Certain Regard. It was then given a theatrical release in Italy as two 3-hour films (titled Act I and Act II), before being aired with broader success on Rai 1 in a slightly longer four-episode television version later that year. In the U.S., the film was released by Miramax in its theatrical version.

The title of the film, an ungrammatical rendition of La miglior gioventù ("the best youth/young people"), comes from the title of a 1954 Friulian language poetry collection by Pier Paolo Pasolini, who in turn borrowed it from a line of Alpini World War II song Sul ponte di Perati; here, Giordana uses it to refer to his generation, which is also the main characters' one, made up of those young people who participated in the Sessantotto.