Space Day 2022
The Big Step
directed by Antonio Padovan, 2019, 96”
Friday, December 16 at 6pm CT
In-person Screening
Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago
500 N Michigan Ave, Chicago
On the occasion of the Day of Space, sponsored by the Italian Space Agency and the Italian Minister for Technological Innovation and Digital Transition, the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago will be screening the Italian movie The Big Step, directed by Antonio Padovan.
Since Dario Cavalieri saw live images of the first moon landing at the age of six, he never stopped wishing to go there. Mario Cavalieri runs a neighborhood hardware store in Rome, until the day his existence is turned upside down by a call: his brother Dario is in prison. Mario finds himself being the only one who can take care of the brother, whom he has seen only once in his life. The two brothers, as physically similar as they are different in character, will find themselves alone in the face of an impossible undertaking.
Watch the Trailer
Italian movies The Big Step and Cosmonaut will also be available on streaming on MyMovies for 72 hours starting on December 16 at 1pm CT.
Cosmonaut
Directed by Susanna Nicchiarelli, 2009, 85”
In the late ’50s to early ’60s, when the space war between the Soviet and US was fiercely going on, a fifteen-year-old member of the communist party, Luciana, develops her ideals while living with her bourgeois stepfather, and among male chauvinists in a communist group in Rome. Her only friend is her brother Arturo, who dreams of going to space but is unable to do so due to his epilepsy.
The Big Step
Directed by Antonio Padovan, 2019, 96”
Since Dario Cavalieri saw live images of the first moon landing at the age of six, he never stopped wishing to go there. Mario Cavalieri runs a neighborhood hardware store in Rome, until the day his existence is turned upside down by a call: his brother Dario is in prison. Mario finds himself being the only one who can take care of the brother, whom he has seen only once in his life. The two brothers, as physically similar as they are different in character, will find themselves alone in the face of an impossible undertaking.