Three young aspiring screenwriters – working-class Luciano, scholarly Antonino and bourgeois Eugenia – are summoned to Rome as finalists in a national competition sponsored by the Italian film industry’s old guard. The boozy evening carries on and on, with the actual award seeming like an afterthought to the assembled aging eccentrics hanging on to the dying lights of the Golden Age of the Italian film industry. But when one of the venerable old movie producers turns up murdered at the end of the evening, the police turn to the young upstart screenwriters as their prime suspects. As they are questioned over the course of the night, each writer elaborates on their own fantastical version of what happened on that fateful night.

Virtuoso director Paolo Virzì seamlessly blends comedy with mystery in this hilarious romp that embraces the best traditions of the Italian Golden Age, while making a pointed satire about the way the Italian youth of today are straightjacketed by an immovable inertia of their flailing elders. A hoot from start to finish, Notti Magiche will have you crying from laughter one moment and sitting on the edge of your seat the next.