Northern Italy's battle cry flops at the box office

Blow to campaign for a breakaway country as cinemagoers spurn Bossi's star-studded epic

Silvio Berlusconi backed it as a celebration of northern Italian pride. The leader of Italy's most outspoken anti-immigrant political party appeared in it. And the state television network, Rai, partly paid for it. But despite the hype, a €19m (£17m) price tag and a host of star names, the first attempt to produce a "patriotic" film for Italians living north of Florence has turned out a box-office disaster and the catalyst for an unseemly political row. Barbarossa (Redbeard), stars Rutger Hauer as the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I, who unsuccessfully fought the clans of northern Italy in the 12th century. Cécile Cassel, the sister of actor Vincent, plays his wife, Beatrix. As an epic tale of derring-do and heroic defiance by Milanese rebels, the film's plot was seen by the Northern League – which dreams of establishing a breakaway country in the north called Padania – as a 139-minute party political broadcast. The league's leader, Umberto Bossi, even plays a cameo role and influential supporters of the Padania project provided much of the financial backing for the biggest Italian historical epic to be produced in 40 years. Then it all started to go wrong... Observer