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Poster for Tea with Mussolini
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Released
1999 · FILM

Tea with Mussolini

A young Italian boy is raised by a spirited group of British expatriate women in 1930s Italy, but their idyllic life is shattered as war and fascism upend their world.

A story of civilized disobedience

Runtime
117 min
ComedyDramaWar

Synopsis

In 1930s fascist Italy, adolescent Luca loses his mother and is sent by his indifferent father to be cared for by British expatriate Mary Wallace. Mary, along with her refined social circle—comprising artist Arabella, young widow Elsa, and archaeologist Georgie—takes an interest in the boy. Their sophisticated lives are upended when Allied forces declare war on Mussolini.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 23

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Tariq AnwarShot by David WatkinScored by Stefano Arnaldi

Box Office

1999 · Box office

⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 1.8× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$21.0M

Budget$12.0M
Worldwide gross$21.0M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $14.4M 69% of worldwide · International: $6.6M (31%)

Also known as

  • Tee mit Mussolinide
  • Té con Mussolinies
  • Un thé avec Mussolinifr
  • Un tè con Mussoliniit

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