Where it was filmed 'I Am Santa Claus'

The historical centre of Rome is recognisable when Ettore Magni, a former prisoner played by Marco Giallini, walks alone along the river Tiber to his former companions’ barge after his release from the prison of Regina Coeli. Rejected by his ex-wife and with no place to go, Ettore is preparing to spend the cold night (it is almost Christmas) on a bench when an unexpected gift takes him to the home of Mr. Nicola Natalizi (Gigi Proietti) who, somewhat naively, welcomes Ettore in and reveals that he is none other than Father Christmas having left the cold of Lapland fifty years earlier for Rome where he enjoys life “except for the smog, traffic, rubbish, holes, public transport…”

Ettore’s scepticism becomes wonder when he boards Father Christmas’ ultra-modern sleigh and is taken on a thrilling aerial journey over the Eternal City and its monuments: from the gazometro it hovers over the Colosseum, the Campidoglio and the Vittoriano, the Basilica of St. Peters and its dome and the bridges over the Tiber. In seconds the magic sleigh is in Paris, then London.

The ex-convict gradually considers the possibility of taking over from Nicola and the pair discuss the idea on a bench by the lake of Villa Borghese with the temple of Aesculapius behind them. Ettore discovers to his cost that the path to redemption is not as simple and linear as it might seem and that being Father Christmas is about more than costumes.