Take a step back into the past to tell the story of Italy’s hot autumn with the new film by Sergio Castro San Martín, in theaters from August 27, 2026. Even the locations of Il Cileno, as well as the costumes, dialogues, and every other detail, have the task of recreating on screen the atmosphere of the time: the goal is reached thanks to the choice of views of the center and the outskirts of Turin that were symbols of the mid-1970s armed struggle or that nonetheless preserved the sense of unease and subterranean fervor of those years.
The Savoy city is not the only place where filming took place. Here are all the film locations.
What is it about
It is 1976: Aldo Marín (Camilo Arancibia), an experienced miner skilled in explosives and a socialist activist, has left Chile to escape the repression following the Pinochet coup and has arrived in Turin in search of work that will allow him to bring his wife and newborn son out of the country. Along with him is his best friend, El Chapa, who once in Italy quickly forms ties with figures in the criminal underworld.
These are the Years of Lead, and Aldo soon finds his plans shifting: the encounter with Luciana (Sara Serraiocco), a young university professor who defends women’s rights, and especially the meeting with his brother Enrico, a leader of an extraparliamentary party, draw him toward the armed struggle.
Hounded by a police major adept in explosives, as well as by a past he would have preferred to leave behind, “The Cileno” – as Aldo is nicknamed – ends up torn between fidelity to his ideals and the desire for a quiet life.
Where was the film shot
Turin
Turin is, among the places where Il Cileno was shot, the one that occupies the most screen space and it could not have been otherwise for purely narrative reasons.
The Turin locations include the Palazzo dei Lavori Pubblici, Piazza San Giovanni, the Falchera Lakes and Piazza Giovanni Astengo, the Quadrilatero Romano, the Regina Margherita Underpass and the Murazzi del Po, the Gardens of the Fante, the Courtyard of the Maglio, the Aula Magna of Anatomy Pathology of the Department of Medical Sciences: all places chosen with the aim of portraying 1970s Turin, seemingly cold and anonymous, but in reality moved from within by powerful and unsettled forces.
Canton Ticino
Among the locations of “Il Cileno” – which is an international production by dispàrte, Equequo and Cinédokké – there is also the Canton of Ticino. As confirmed by the Ticino Film Commission, some shootings took place at the Fondazione Eranos headquarters: a “time-out island,” as Carl Jung once described it, on the Monte Verità in Ascona (Switzerland), a place once frequented by utopians, naturists, theosophists, anarchists and today open to anyone who wants to reconnect with nature and with their inner self.
Locarno’s Spazio ELLE hosted, for a few days, the film set of Sergio Castro San Martín: a place halfway between a cultural center and a “maison de quartier” where every day proposals from independent artists are welcomed and where, thanks to the involvement of each citizen, the values of conviviality and integration are promoted.
Chile
The shooting of the film’s first part, focused on the main character’s past, took place in Chile: the production, however, did not release details on exactly which locations of Il Cileno are in the country.
