Two brothers, who have opposite characters and make opposite life choices: Massimo (Alessandro Gassmann) is a trendy lawyer and Paolo (Luigi Lo Cascio) is a paediatrician, their wives are constantly in conflict. They have been meeting once a month for many years in a luxury restaurant just to respect a tradition. Their conversation is always inconsistent: salted anchovies with ricotta and fried vegetables, the most recent French film to come out, the fruity scent of a wine, the latest corrupt politician. But one evening a security camera films a bravado of their respective children and the family’s balance is utterly shattered. How will the two men, two families so different, faceup to a tragic event that involves them so closely? Freely inspired by “The Dinner” by Herman Koch, this is a provocative look at the often unseen underside of contemporary bourgeois family life, that poses the questions to us all: How well do we really know our children? How well do we know ourselves?

DIRECTOR'S NOTES
"I've always been fascinated by families that reproduce, in miniature, the society around them. I come from one of these families myself, a large family that won me over with its enormous contradictions. With La bella gente, and then Balancing Act, I wanted to explore what happens when an external factor disrupts the tranquil, safe existence of a totally ordinary family that seems, at least, to be happy. But in The Dinner I go even further, in an attempt to show what happens when the explosion is set off from within, by the family itself."