In 1910, Italian cinema holds a leading place. The international success of films conditions a national film production which finds in the sumptuous historic reconstructions the foundations to assert the greatness of a past of which audiences are particularly fond. The public is impassioned by these films which retrace the key dates of European history around an intrigue made to order from episodes of the Bible, Roman epics and the Renaissance. Italian productions then become grandiose spectacles, privileging the deployment of sets and extras without original dramatic action.

To design and build the sets, arrange the extras and compose the reconstructions, far more than film directors, what is needed are painters, stage managers and architects: it's the director of the renowned Capture of Rome (La presa di Roma) Filoteo Alberini (1865-1937) who discovers the man of a thousand talents, Enrico Guazzoni (1876-1949). Trained at the Institute of Fine Arts in Rome, Guazzoni begins working in 1907 as artistic advisor at Cines. In 1909, he takes up direction, writes scripts and designs the sets for all his films, which are in fact true historic spectacles. Guazzoni becomes the first great "crowd handler" and raises historic reconstruction to the rank of fresco of epic power.

Played by Maria Gasparini (?-1969) and Amleto Novelli (1881-1924), Cines' hit couple, Agrippina augurs a new use of space and perspective in the cinema which Enrico Guazzoni was to spectacularly exploit in 1912 in his masterpiece Quo Vadis?. The influence of the Italian master is such that it leads D.W. Griffith (1875-1948) to commence the films which were to make him famous.

The original music for this film was composed by Fabien Cali in 2011 in the context of the call for proposals launched in partnership with the Sacem (Société des auteurs compositeurs et éditeurs de musique – Society of authors, composers and music editors).