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Nanni Moretti would make a formidable politician. The acclaimed Italian director - also a producer, writer, actor, committed socialist, water-polo star and cinema owner - is not afraid of conflict. In February 2002, addressing a rally in Rome against the then prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, he laid into the controversial politican, and then the rally's organisers, Democratic Left, for its failure to launch a serious challenge to the government. Later that year, to prove he was not all mouth, he helped organised a series of anti-Berlusconi protests.Unsurprisingly, when he wants to lay bare the full, sinister power of Berlusconi at the climax of his new film, The Caiman, Moretti does not use vintage footage of the former prime minister, nor the two actors who play Berlusconi earlier in his film. Instead, the director steps in front of the camera. Moretti on screen, stony-faced, reading the insults uttered by the discredited politician, makes for an apocalyptic finale."As Italians, we have become so accustomed to him that we really couldn't see the weight, the threatening nature, the danger, of his words," says Moretti."I was absolutely not interested in acting the character of Berlusconi by mimicking him, nor did I want to make a parody or satire. What I wanted to do was give back to the audience a way of perceiving the weight and menace of his words."The threat poised by Moretti's words troubled the Italian leader in the run-up to Italy's election in April. The Caiman was the 53-year-old film-maker's first work to directly address the turbulent years under Berlusconi. With an astute eye on maximum impact, Moretti withheld information about the film and released it two weeks before the election, at which Italian voters kicked their colourful prime minister out of office, ending what Moretti calls Italy's "political adventure".Did The Caiman decide the election?..Moretti, who won lavish praise and the Palme d'Or in 2001 for The Son's Room, laughs. "I tried to make a good film - that was my intention," he says. "If some people changed their minds, then that's good." Unlikely to succumb to false modesty, Moretti is more like a minister side-stepping a spending commitment, unwilling to make definitive statements.Throughout his career, he has laboured under the unwanted sobriquet of the Italian Woody Allen: they share an ability to act, as well as direct and write, a comic touch and a tendency towards narcissistic autobiography. But Moretti certainly doesn't rattle out a film each year. And, from Dear Diary to Aprile, his work is suffused with a defiant subtlety. Moretti says The Caiman is "not a direct, frontal approach" but "a sidelong shot" at Berlusconi.Preoccupied with the relationship between private lives and public events, Moretti focuses on the story of Bruno, a washed-up film producer and Berlusconi voter played by Silvio Orlando, who is persuaded to take on a script by young director Teresa (Jasmine Trinca, who, like Orlando, was cast in The Son's Room). Teresa has written an ambitious account of Berlusconi's 30-year rise through property development, media ownership and finally, political leadership. But Bruno is consumed by his personal life - his marriage is collapsing - and cannot even finish reading the script.Nevertheless, he is persuaded to make the film and battles rejection from the TV companies that might fund it, and actors nervous of, or bored by, its incendiary political content. In reality, says Moretti, this is one reason why so few films have been made about Berlusconi, who was allowed to own three commercial TV channels and, as PM, in effect controlled three other state channels...Bruno's journey is not, however, a path to enlightenment. His political views are never shown to change; rather, he is motivated to make the film by a desperation to reinvigorate his moribund career and, perhaps, a desire to impress Teresa. "I specifically avoided making Bruno go along an ideological path. I didn't want to portray Bruno as, 'Yes, in the past I voted for Berlusconi, but now I've met this girl I've been converted - now I understand and want to make the film.' It's not as clear as that. I wanted to avoid a raising-of- consciousness film."The lack of cinematic critiques of the Berlusconi era is "self-censoring by various filmmakers", he reckons. "Film-makers know that part of the funding comes from TV channels. Perhaps they haven't even consciously tried to think about how to go about it [making a film about Berlusconi] because they knew beforehand they would meet negative responses." Moretti, however, has an international reputation and his own production company, and did not need financial support from any TV companies to make The Caiman.But there are reasons other than funding, Moretti believes, for his country's creative silence. In his own film, Moretti offers a number of theories. When he appears as himself to turn down Bruno and Teresa's offer of a part as Berlusconi, he says: "We already know all about him. Those who want to know, know. Those who don't ... There's nothing more to tell. Everything's known. He's already won. Twenty or 30 years ago, he changed our heads."Was Berlusconi's takeover of commercial TV a prelude to his capture of voters' minds?Outside The Caiman, Moretti shies away from such a bald declaration. "That is a reductionist statement," he says. "It is only a part of the problem. I don't want to attribute this power to one person alone. I don't want to accept that one person can be responsible for changing the head of Italy." And, he adds, you have to appreciate the filmic context - at the point in The Caiman when he refuses to play Berlusconi, Moretti is pretending to know Teresa's screenplay without having read it. It is, he says, rather like the "hysterical pre-election climate" surrounding The Caiman's release in Italy. "There was a whole debate in the press in Italy, and no one had seen it, so they didn't know what they were talking about."Berlusconi's legacy, Moretti believes, is poisonous: a polarised country "split in half" and the "ugly" fact that it is considered acceptable for a prime minister to own three commercial television stations and control three more state stations. "Before, even when there was quite a striking contrast between the Christian Democrats and the socialist and communist parties they would be able to speak to each other, because they knew they had behind them a common background - the making of Italy. In the past 13 years, we have lost the sense of common heritage and common democratic values that apply to everyone."Where his character Teresa wanted to "shake the audience out of its torpor" with her excoriating - and unbackable - film about Berlusconi, Moretti's intention, he says, is less didactic. "My purpose is to remind myself," he says. "As I have this extraordinary medium at my disposal, I wanted to use it in order to really remind myself that this really happened in my country. I want to be in a position where I haven't not borne testimony to what has gone on in my country."..WE SHALL NOT BE SILENCED.THANK YOU NANNIYOURSM.D.&I. (MY DOG&I)