The Mattei Affair is a dramatic reconstruction about the real life Enrico Mattei, the most powerful and feared man in postwar Italy. It won the Grand Prix at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. Director Francesco Rosi explains that his is a true story, weaving first-person recollections with a dramatic counterpoint reconstructing Mattei's tragic death and bold life. It is an “open-ended” film brimming with adventure and suspense, a mosaic recounting the world of one of the century's most controversial men. The Mattei Affair was filmed in the actual locations where Mattei lived and worked - Milan, Rome, Sicily, the plains of Lombardy, North Africa, the Persian Gulf and France. Gian Maria Volonte enacts the role of Mattei in the film, and he is joined by a distinguished group of professional actors and real-life adversaries and friends who recall the myth and reality of Mattei.