Directed by Marco Bellochio, this unorthodox historical drama charts Benito Mussolini’s rise to power, from his days editing the socialist newspaper Avanti to his founding of the fascist paper Il Popolo d’Italia to his emergence as Italy’s supreme leader. Mussolini tried to suppress the fact that his foray into journalism was bankrolled by Ida Dalser, who would become his first wife and bear him a son. In depicting Ida’s downward spiral after her husband discards her for his second wife, Bellochio intercuts striking archival footage of Mussolini addressing the masses with shadowy scenes of her languishing alone in an insane asylum, where she’s forcibly confined after refusing to disavow her marriage. Carol Crivelli’s soaring classical score heightens Bellochio’s operatic tendencies. In Italian with subtitles.