Brief Synopsis:

Italian good people? Questionable. But, of course, the Italian country has never really been a warrior people, also because the millenary history of the country has seen too many wars, violence, plagues to be able to rely only on national love.
Starting from this particular historical condition, “Scherza con i fanti” wants to be both a tragicomic journey in the recent history of Italy and a Universal hymn to peace, but above all it proposes itself with a journey of more than a hundred years, starting with the royal post-unification army, which tries to probe the difficult and also suffered and ironic relationship of the people with the military world and more generally with power, in which a pieta of Christian origin acts strongly. All this through popular songs and four war diaries. The diaries are interwoven with the popular songs and music of joy and pain chosen and composed by Ambrogio Sparagna and the precious repertoire of the Archives of the Istituto Luce Cinecittà.