Il regno (2020)

When his father dies, Giacomo, an ATAC bus driver, is summoned by his father’s lawyer, Bartolomeo, to an old estate outside the city gates. There he discovers that his father, who had thrown him and his mother out of the house many years earlier, left him all his possessions, and that a small community living according to medieval traditions has formed on his country estate. To his astonishment, Giacomo learns that his father had proclaimed himself king of the community and that its members had willingly submitted to him; as his father’s sole heir, Giacomo therefore becomes his rightful successor. The community uses no money, only barter, and its people live simply, rejecting all modernity and complying with the king’s wishes. Giacomo discovers that he has a half-sister, Lisa, who covets the throne and considers him unfit to rule because he comes from the outside world. Giacomo tries to win over his subjects, eager to make friends and thus escape the loneliness that had weighed on him in the outside world. Lisa, however, manages to convince the community that Giacomo is not a worthy ruler. Determined to earn their respect, Giacomo begins acting like an absolute ruler, thereby regaining complete control over his subjects but falling back into loneliness. Giacomo’s delusions of grandeur lead him to invade a neighbouring farmer’s land. The farmer is kidnapped and then persuaded to ally himself with the king and join his community. It is the neighbour who spreads word of the kingdom’s existence, bringing about its end: first, migrants from the real world arrive, prompting the community to reject outright the sovereign’s decision to welcome them, and then the king, shut up in his castle, is besieged. The police then arrive, threaten to clear everyone out, and take steps to do so 48 hours later. Giacomo intends to defend his kingdom, but his people abandon him, with Lisa’s complicity. The evening before the police arrive, she drugs him, making him fall asleep, and leaves him a note on a noticeboard in the village. After a heroic attempt by a small police contingent to break through, Giacomo inevitably ends up in prison to serve a five-year sentence. From time to time, all the prisoners sit in front of him to listen to stories about what the former king went through inside the kingdom. Ofelia, a commoner from the kingdom with whom he had fallen in love and who had lost her virginity to his father under the right of the first night, visits him in prison. Ofelia intends to marry Giacomo once he gets out, but Giacomo does not seem able to bear the fact that she slept with his own father. After the end credits, we discover that Bartolomeo did not die as a result of the turmoil caused by the police’s arrival, but is living in Giacomo’s house as an occupant.