I'm Back () is a 2018 Italian satirical comedy film about Benito Mussolini directed by Luca Miniero, based on the German film Look Who's Back, in turn based on the satirical novel of the same name. The film includes unscripted vignettes of ordinary Italians interacting with Massimo Popolizio (pretending to be Benito Mussolini), interspersed among scripted scenes.
Plot
In 2017 Rome, Benito Mussolini (Massimo Popolizio) falls from the sky, landing in front of the Alchemical Door. As he wanders, disoriented and believing it still to be 1945, through the city, he interprets modern situations and things from a Fascist perspective. Asking for information, nobody believing him to be the real Mussolini, he's in the end pepper sprayed by a scared woman and starts to feel dizzy. Before passing out, he arrives at a newspaper kiosk owned by a gay couple and is able to read the date, discovering that it is 2017, on the front page of a journal. He's then hosted at the kiosk for a while by the couple, despite Mussolini making some homophobic comments, and here he starts to read about modern Italy through journals.
Meanwhile, filmmaker Andrea Canaletti (Frank Matano) is fired by the television station MyTV, for which he was filming a movie in front of the Alchemical Door, and despondently decides to watch the movie he had been filming for MyTV when he sees Mussolini in the background. He decides to search for him in the hope of getting his job back; after some time, he is able to find him.
Canaletti and others believe Mussolini to be just a comedy actor, and he and Mussolini agree to travel together across Italy, Canaletti wishing to make a documentary that may lead him to success, while Mussolini wants to assay the Italians' mood in the hope of one day returning to power.
While they are traveling, Mussolini begins to question and interact with Italians while he is filmed by Canaletti, but then there is an argument between them when Mussolini shoots a dog with a concealed pistol due to it being "English". Despite this, Canaletti decides to continue the documentary with him.
The duo gather a lot of interest and acclaim in a short time, and finally, due to Mussolini's continuing growth in popularity and his ideas becoming accepted by more people, the ambitious Katia Bellini (Stefania Rocca), the new chairman of MyTV, decides to create a new television show dedicated to the dictator.
The show becomes a boon to both Mussolini – who continues to gather popularity and even catches the attention of foreign media - and to Canaletti, who is soon rehired and promoted. Only a few people openly criticize Mussolini's fanatical populist rhetoric and the media circus created by it, as MyTV employees caution in vain against celebrating the character that much for the sake of their show business.
Soon, things begin to go wrong for the two: a MyTV executive discovers the unedited footage of Mussolini shooting the dog during his travels with Canaletti and, out for revenge against Bellini for subverting his authority, airs it during a television debate of Mussolini with Enrico Mentana. This ruins the careers of Mussolini, Canaletti and Bellini.
Without dwellings or employment, Canaletti and Mussolini move, for the time being, to the house of Canaletti's girlfriend Francesca (Eleonora Belcamino), whom Canaletti was aided in seducing by Mussolini. There, Francesca's grandmother (Ariella Reggio), who survived the Raid of the Ghetto of Rome, has an argument with Mussolini; disgusted by Mussolini's ideas, Canaletti decides to distance himself from him.
Outside alone at night, Mussolini gets violently beaten up by a group of masked men (possible Neo Nazis who believe he is an imitator for mocking with Caricature). At first, it appears to have been a group of animal rights activists acting in retaliation for the shooting of the dog, but the incident is then revealed to have been orchestrated by Bellini, to shift popularity from MyTV's rival TV station. Mussolini falls in love with her because she reminds him of his mistress, Claretta Petacci.
In the meantime, Canaletti rewatches the recordings he made before he met Mussolini, and in them notices the supposed comedian falling from the sky. Upon returning to that location, he links the occurrence to the legend of a door between the worlds of the living and of the dead, and concludes that the "comedian" is none other than the real Mussolini.