The Last One for the Road 2026

Carlobianchi (played by Sergio Romano) and Doriano (played by Pierpaolo Capovilla) are two broke men in their fifties who chase the elusive hair of the dog—a Veneto phrase known as l’ultimo or l’ultima—while anxiously awaiting the return of their friend Genio from Argentina after the 2008 financial crisis. With one last drink on their minds, they decide to head to Venice in the dead of night to drink there, hoping the city will offer a final, weary respite from their stubborn luck and broken dreams.

Giulio (played by Filippo Scotti), a shy architecture student, is celebrating the graduation of his friend Giulia (played by Giulia Bertasi), a woman he secretly loves. Carlobianchi and Doriano crash the celebration, and Giulio reluctantly goes along, but soon decides to step away from the group. The two men then offer to drive him back to Mestre, insisting they can still share a few more drinks on the road.

The following morning, Giulio wakes up in Treviso, realizing that Carlobianchi had gone to the wrong airport and Genio somehow landed in Venice. Resolved to see where his two companions have wandered, Giulio decides to chase after them in hopes of finding the restaurant where Genio and the pair used to go with him. As they press on through the Venetian countryside, the trio—now bound by a brittle camaraderie—grapple with the past that binds them. They use Giulio’s architectural knowledge to keep up a convincing façade when an old villa’s owner mistakes them for surveyors, securing both alcohol and travel reimbursements through the owner’s indulgence and Carlobianchi’s charm.

That evening they unexpectedly encounter Genio again. Carlobianchi and Doriano greet him with warmth, but Genio remains distant and aloof, leaving after a terse exchange. The group decides to search for the buried money Genio once hid, hoping to salvage some of what was once theirs. They go to Genio’s house and discover the coordinates to the burial site, only to learn that a construction site has swallowed the place where the money was buried, leaving it lost and unreachable. The trio drains what remains of their resolve in more drinking and eventually sleeps at Carlobianchi’s parents’ house, the weight of their choices and the vanished fortune hanging over them.

The next morning, Giulio calls Giulia to ask if he can join her in Verona. She agrees, and Carlobianchi and Doriano offer to drive him to the nearest train station, but before parting ways they visit the Brion Memorial. At the station, Giulio bids farewell to his companions with warmth and gratitude, and as the train pulls away, Carlobianchi and Doriano follow it by car, waving goodbye with a sense of exhausted, renewed freedom, the night’s strange journey marking a quiet turning point for all of them.

As the trio reflects on their past—three friends who once worked in an eyewear factory in the 2000s, illegally selling production scraps and building a business worth hundreds of thousands—Genio’s departure and the loss of the buried money loom large. Genio fled to Argentina, burying his share of the money, while Carlobianchi squandered his, even buying a Jaguar S-Type before the factory shut down and he had to move back in with his parents. The narrative lingers on the tension between memory and possibility, the lure of one last night out, and the fragile threads that tie these men to a future they can barely imagine.