Happy as Lazzaro

Happy as Lazzaro is a 2018 Italian-language drama film written and directed by Alice Rohrwacher. It was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, where Rohrwacher won the award for Best Screenplay. It is a co-production between Italy, Switzerland, France and Germany. Plot On an estate called Inviolata, isolated since 1977, 54 farmhands work on a tobacco farm in a sharecropping arrangement, where they are constantly in debt and thus unpaid. The farm is run in a feudal manner by the notorious Marchioness Alfonsina De Luna, "Queen of Cigarettes". Lazzaro is a worker on the farm who dutifully follows every command given to him by the Marchioness, her son, Tancredi, and the estate manager. Tancredi befriends Lazzaro and decides to fake his own kidnapping to aggravate his mother and get some of her money. Tancredi and Lazzaro set out in the wilderness and badlands, where they write a false ransom note and bond with each other. They imitate a wolf's howl to make contact with a lone wolf roaming the countryside; Tancredi also warmly suggests they could be half-brothers, since his father was a womanizer. Lazzaro takes the idea of their brotherhood seriously. Tancredi's mother sees through the fake kidnapping straight away but the estate manager's daughter takes it seriously enough to call the police on her mobile phone during a rare surge in signal strength. The police arrive on the isolated estate by helicopter and begin to search for the missing marquis; they are astonished by what they find on the farm, saying sharecropping has long been illegal, the workers should be earning wages, and that the children should have mandatory education. The police evacuate Inviolata, and Alfonsina is arrested in a scandal that becomes known as the "Great Swindle." Lazzaro, distracted by a police helicopter, falls off a cliff and is left behind unconscious in a ravine; later a wolf (perhaps real, perhaps symbolic) spots him and identifies him by smell as a good man. When Lazzaro awakes, magically many years later, he has not aged and wanders into Inviolata, which is long abandoned and is being raided by robbers (one of whom lived there as a child). The robbers lie to Lazzaro the estate has moved and they are moving possessions for the De Luna family. They also tell him the city is within walking distance. Lazzaro sets out for the city, which he has never been to. There, a woman, Antonia, recognizes Lazzaro from the farm.