Production notes

The film's producers are Penta Film, A.M.A. Film, Silvio Berlusconi Communications and Cecchi Gori Group Tiger Cinematografica. The script was written by Enzo Monteleone and is loosely based on the 1954 autobiographical novel Sagapò by Renzo Biasion (with Sagapò meaning "I love you" in the Greek language); the script and novel show marked differences in how they portray the Italian army in Greece, with the novel giving a more realistic account of both. Filming took place in the Greek Dodecanese on the island of Kastellórizo.

The film grossed US$4.5 million in the United States and Canada, and was the highest-grossing non-English language film at the US box office that year, but was later surpassed by Indochine, which was released at Christmas 1992 and grossed most of its revenue in 1993.

Mediterraneo was received mostly positively by film critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an 80% score, based on 15 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10. Several critics linked the movie to the tradition of Italian neorealism. Nevertheless, the victory of the Academy Award raised some eyebrows, with The Washington Post describing the movie as a "schmaltzy island fantasy", and the Film Journal calling it a "clichéd number". Roger Ebert claimed that this was the only film he ever walked out of because it was "utterly without redeeming merit". However, he previously wrote that he had walked out of films like Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Caligula. Among historians, the movie was discussed as a prime example of the myth of Italiani brava gente, the popular Italian belief that Italian soldiers were not complicit in war crimes and had distinguished themselves through humanity and compassion during World War II — in stark contrast to their ideologically motivated and brutal German allies. It has been argued that the movie does not make any reference to the atrocities committed by Italians during the Axis occupation of Greece while portraying Royal Italian Army soldiers as essentially good-natured people, if not innocent buffoons. In reality, the burning of villages, shooting of civilians, and rapes were common features of the Italian occupation. However, the film shows Italian aggressors mingling with the locals and even establishing consensual erotic relationships with Greek women.

It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1992.