Il toro

"The Bull" is a quiet social-realist drama about Franco, who is fired from the bull-breeding station where he works. When the breeding station's management is at the same time unwilling to pay Franco the money he is owed, the family man becomes so desperate and fed up that one night he makes off with the station's finest breeding bull, Corinto. Franco persuades his good friend and former colleague Loris to lend him a lorry and come with him to Hungary, where Franco knows a buyer for the bull. Things do not go as smoothly through formerly communist Eastern Europe as Franco had reckoned, however, and when they finally reach the Hungarian breeding station, everything has been turned upside down. A foreigner has bought the station, whose manager under communism has retired. Nobody is interested in buying Franco's stolen bull. The film very nearly ends in tragedy, but fortunately a solution to the problem turns up that leaves all parties involved satisfied.

Although "The Bull" in many ways gives a dispiriting account of Franco and Loris's experiences on their journey through Eastern Europe, the film is not without humour. It reached cinemas last year, a few years late.