Bread and Chocolate

Bread and Chocolate is a 1974 Italian comedy-drama film directed by Franco Brusati. This film chronicles the misadventures of an Italian immigrant to Switzerland and is representative of the commedia all'italiana film genre. In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978." Plot Like many southern Europeans of the period (1960s to early 1970s), Nino Garofalo (Nino Manfredi) is a migrant "guest worker" from Italy, working as a waiter in Switzerland. He loses his work permit when he is caught urinating in public, so he begins to lead a clandestine life in Switzerland. At first he is supported by Elena, a Greek woman and political refugee. Then he is befriended by an Italian industrialist, relocated to Switzerland because of financial problems. The industrialist takes him under his wing and invests his savings for him, but kills himself after his financial scheme collapses, without having told Nino where he deposited his savings. Nino is constrained to find shelter with a group of clandestine Neapolitans living in a chicken coop, together with the same chickens they tend to in order to survive.