La scuola romana delle risate

«Laughter is a weapon, and we are the partisans.» This was the credo of Rome's comedic scene in the 1950s, resurrected in this 2025 documentary. Through rare archival footage, interviews with surviving contemporaries, and fragments of lost stage performances, the director excavates the phenomenon of the 'Roman School of Laughter'—a collective of actors and writers who reshaped Italian theater and cinema. The film reveals how Alberto Sordi, Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani, and others forged a uniquely biting, profoundly human humor born on the postwar streets of Rome. More than a chronicle, it's an immersion into the laboratory of laughter where neorealism took root and every joke was a minor revolution. The documentary becomes a portal to an era when satire held the power to sway society.