In the first 24 hours of its release on January 1, the musical comedy Tolo Tolo was the biggest grossing Italian film of all time. Its subject matter: migration, Italian society and the right to dream, which has set Italy talking.

Checco Zalone is used to big box office figures and Italian accolades. Over the last few years, films about the comic personality created by Luca Medici have been big draws. Zalone's character, which started as a TV comedy sketch, represents and lightly sends up, and lovingly portrays, the average Italian middle-aged, center-right voting southern man, with all the stereotypes that implies.