Mussolini arrives in a small town in 1901 and gets a job as a school teacher; he is subsequently fired for having sex with the headmaster's daughter. This would be a common theme throughout the movie. After giving up on teaching, he works as a builder on the new University of Geneva campus building, and where a lover persuades him to become a student. This is also where he organizes his first protest after the death of a worker he knew. For this, he is nearly deported but is saved by Angelica's intervention. After getting run out of then-Austro-Hungarian Trieste, he goes back to his hometown of Forlì, where he marries Rachele. Soon he is at the forefront of the Socialist movement when he becomes the editor-in-chief of Avanti!. At this point Mussolini unites the "reds," the Socialists, with the "yellows," the Republicans in an anti-war movement. This marks the peak of his power, with the Italian left-wing politics under his control. However, he gradually loses his anti-war fervor and splits from the Socialist party altogether, turning all his allies into enemies.

• Antonio Banderas as Benito Mussolini
• Toni Bertorelli as Primo
• Valentina Lainati as Giulia Ferrari
• Ivano Marescotti as Giacinto Menotti Serrati
• Franco Mescolini as Ferrari
• Anna Geislerová as Eleonora
• Claudia Koll as Rachele Guidi
• Susanne Lothar as Angelica Balabanoff
• Luca Zingaretti as Pietro Nenni

• List of Italian films of 1993

• Benito (English), Il Giovane Mussolini (Italian) at IMDb