In the 70s in western Europe, especially in Italy and Germany, a part of the left movement thought that the time of a violent system change had come, and they engaged themselves in 'armed struggle' to that effect. But they were wrong and were defeated. As it always happens, the history is (re)written by the winners, and so members of armed organizations such as Brigate Rosse and RAF came to be depicted as bloodthirsty psychopaths in mainstrean, State-controlled historiography.
This film has the merit of doing justice to these modern Don Quixotes.