Contrary to its initial purpose of eliminating the corruption that plagued postWorld War I Italy, Fascism actually went in the opposite direction. By deliberately “falsifying” archival material to give shape and life to the characters, the film presents four of the most emblematic and lively stories illustrating how Italy confirmed its inclination towards corruption even during the twenty-year Fascist regime. An important and respected general with a boundless passion for private property; a film production company that puts Italian cinema in the spotlight worldwide but is rooted in an extensive network of business ventures profiting from supplies to East Africa; the adventurous life of the leader of the team that assassinated Matteotti, which allowed him to blackmail Mussolini for the whole duration of the regime; and the widespread corruption in Milan during the 1920s, which, under the relentless pressure of Farinacci, forced Mussolini to abruptly remove the Chief Magistrate and the Federal Secretary. Falso storico is a posthumous film by Felice Farina (1954-2023), one of the most original and eclectic of Italian independent filmmakers.
Felice Farina was a visionary who made comedies. An ex-actor from the illustrious avant-garde theatre of 1970s Rome who discovered a vocation for directing, he was also an expert carpenter and an inventor of bizarre contraptions, not to mention an artist with a passion for science and technology who often made devices to be used on set himself and who collaborated on the special effects of his last two films, La fisica dell’acqua e Patria. […] Our defective collective memory was one of his obsessions. So much so that even his latest film, Falso storico, recreates in a paradoxical and sarcastic vein four emblematic stories from the Fascist period to remind us how, despite its bombastic claims, corruption ran unchecked at the highest level even under the Duce.

Fabio Ferzetti, “Hollywood Reporter”, 18 September 2023