1990, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Achille Occhetto proposes changing the name of the Italian Communist Party. This proposition leads to a series of debates within party circles—between those who want to turn over a new leaf and those who have doubts about change.

Nanni Moretti made his first foray into documentary filmmaking with this torrid examination of a rupture within the Italian Communist Party. Journeying cross-country to capture the intense political debates as they unfolded, The Thing emerges as an elegy for a socialist utopia that wasn’t to be.