The sociopolitical tumult faced by Italians in the ’60s and the ’70s has recently become a subject of great fascination to the country’s filmmakers. Perhaps that’s because it’s easier to get away with period pieces than contemporary tales of chaos and corruption in Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy.

Co-scripted by the writers of the 2003 art-house hit The Best of Youth and directed by a long-time collaborator of Nanni Moretti, My Brother Is an Only Child portrays the era’s seismic shifts through the lens of one family. The main player is Accio (Elio Germano), an adolescent who wants so badly to outrage his parents and trump his better-looking brother Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio) that he declares himself a fascist. While Accio’s inflammatory political flirtations are mostly done for show (and for the sake of laughs), Manrico’s later activities as a leftist radical have more serious repercussions.

Director Daniele Luchetti has a surer grasp on the raucous early scenes of family warfare than the more ambitious political drama that emerges in the film’s second half. Though more erratic than the similarly themed The Best of Youth, My Brother Is an Only Child offers an engaging and colourful take on this volatile time.