A Special Day (2017): Cast & Plot

On 4 May 1938, the day Hitler visits Mussolini in Rome, a quiet, overworked Italian home becomes the backdrop for a chance encounter that unsettles two people who seem to live under the same rigid regime in very different ways. The story follows Antonietta, a naïve and sentimental homemaker whose devoted routine is swallowed by the demands of a bustling household. Her husband, a man of rigid decorum and swaggering authority, leads their six spoiled children out into the streets to follow a grand parade, while the apartment’s halls stay mostly empty except for the building’s caretaker, Pauletta, and a neighbor named Gabriele. Gabriele is a radio broadcaster who has recently been dismissed and faces the threat of deportation to Sardinia because of his homosexuality and alleged anti-fascist stance.