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In the remote mountain town of Vermiglio, Italy, a Sicilian World War II deserter dramatically affects the lives of a teacher's family who shelters him. Writer/director Maura Delpero crafts a sublime exploration of secrets, lies, and patriarchal dominance within a devout and insular social order. Vermiglio, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2024 Venice Film Festival and Italy's submission for Best International Film at the upcoming 97th Academy Awards, is largely seen through the eyes of innocent children as they try to comprehend the seismic events happening around them. The film's magnificent cinematography and score aid a glacial pace that builds steam to a sobering and deeply emotional climax.

In 1944, the Graziadei family huddles together in their various bedrooms to thwart the cold. The white-haired Cesare, the town's respected teacher, lies beside his wife Adele and their infant son, the parents' ninth child. The plot primarily revolves around their three daughters,...

Vermiglio is one of those great films that's hard to fully capture in writing, because it is and does so many things. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2024 Venice Film Festival (essentially second place) and is gaining steam as Italy's submission to the Oscars, which paints one picture. It's an indie box office hit in its own country, which paints another. It's artful, atmospheric, and observant; a slice-of-life film told in a hushed tone. It's dedicated to recreating a specific time and place and dropping us into it. There's a gentle steadiness to the way it moves.

Set in post-World War II Italy, Vermiglio explores the transformative journey of three sisters living in a small mountain village, prompted by the arrival of a soldier. The film chronicles their personal growth and the evolution of their relationships amidst the backdrop of a changing world.

Release Date December 25, 2024Runtime 119 minutesGenres DramaCast Santiago Fondevila,...

Like any system that operates along gendered lines, religious-based patriarchy works well so long as those under its control are content to be confined. For many, there’s a certain comfort that comes with limits and an adherence to duty—in, say, the mother taking care of the home, the father earning the keep, and the children understanding that a certain slavish devotion to obedience keeps them in their parents’ good favor.

Vermiglio’s images are keyed to the simplicity of that kind of domesticity. Here, children tend to the cows before the milk is warmed over the stove for breakfast. Cesare Graziadei (Tommaso Ragno), the titular village’s school teacher, reads the paper devotedly for news from the Italian front as his seven children play and do their daily chores, while his wife, Adele (Roberta Rovelli), dutifully—and, it seems, happily—goes about her duties at home with tender devotion.

Spend some time in the mountains in Italy. An official trailer is out for the Italian film called Vermiglio, set during the end of World War II in the mountains in Italy. This first premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, where it won the second place Grand Jury Prize, and was described by critics as a Terence Malick-esque tale of Italians in the mountains. It just played at the Montclair & London Film Festivals, and will also screen at Berlin's Around the World in 14 Films Festival next this winter before a US release at the end of December this year. Set in 1944, in Vermiglio, a remote mountain village. The arrival of Pietro, a deserter, into the family of the local teacher, and his love for the teacher's eldest daughter, will change the course of everyone's life there. Starring Tommaso Ragno, Giuseppe De Domenico, Roberta Rovelli, Martina Scrinzi, Orietta Notari, Carlotta Gamba,...

Italy will send Maura Delpero’s World War 2 drama Vermiglio into the 2025 Oscar race for Best International Feature.

Vermiglio premiered at the Venice Film Festival last month, where it scooped up the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize. Sideshow and Janus Films acquired domestic rights for the movie shortly after its North American premiere in Toronto.

Set in 1944 in the eponymous village of Vermiglio, high in the Italian Alps, the film follows a local family whose lives are disrupted by the arrival of a refugee soldier from the faraway conflict. As the world emerges from the tragedy and destruction of WW2, the family in Vermiglio faces its own crisis. The ensemble cast includes Tommaso Ragno, Giuseppe De Domenico, Roberta Rovelli, Martina Scrinzi, Orietta Notari, and Carlotta Gamba

A follow-up to Delpero’s well-received 2019 directorial debut Maternal, Vermiglio is loosely based on the director’s own family history. She produced the feature together with Carole Baraton,...

The setting for Maura Delpero’s second feature is a sleepy wartime village in the Italian Alps, but the languid nature of the film is so soporific it borders on anesthetizing; indeed when the credits finally roll, it might be worth checking yourself for scars and other signs of organ harvesting. Technically, it is a marvel of period filmmaking, an immersive view of la vida rustica so bursting with authenticity that it may inspire more enthusiastic viewers to put on a folk hat and get a job in a heritage museum working the spinning jenny. Others may not be so gripped by its drawn-out drama; box-office blockbuster material it is not.

Related: ‘The Room Next Door’s Pedro Almodóvar, Julianne Moore & Tilda Swinton Talk Life, Death, Euthanasia, Female Friendships – Venice Film Festival

The year is 1944, and the war in Europe is still in bloom, with no end in sight. The center of Vermiglio,...

With head bowed, over clasped hands, Italian director Maura Delpero’s quietly breathtaking “Vermiglio” unfolds from tiny tactile details of furnishings and fabrics and the hide of a dairy cow, into a momentous vision of everyday rural existence in the high Italian Alps. Far away, the Second World War is ending — an earthshaking event felt here only in abstract ways, because there’s the real labor of community and family to be getting on with, to say nothing of the private work of finding your own path to tread beneath those towering peaks. To those who live on their slopes, the mountains must be the beginning and end of everything, the amen on every prayer.

It is winter and a sleeping household, with two or three to a bed, gradually stirs. The eldest daughter Lucia (Martina Scrinzi) milks the cow, dreamily resting her face, which she has apparently stolen from a Vermeer painting,...

To note that Gloria!, the directing debut of Italian actor-singer-songwriter Margherita Vicario, is vapid, pseudo-feminist, sentimental piffle would be entirely accurate. And yet, one must also admit that it is at least mildly entertaining piffle, absorbing in the same way that pop videos with lots of dancing and catchy tunes playing in the corner of a quiet bar or a nail salon on a weekday morning are entertaining. If you’re waiting for the polish to dry and can’t use your hands to use your phone, then staring blankly at Gloria! would suffice as a distraction. Alternatively, this is exactly the kind of film you might chance on while channel surfing in a European hotel and find yourself absorbed by, even though there are no subtitles. Indeed, subtitles are barely necessary here given the plot is much like a puppet show or the kind of fable children make up while playing with dolls.

The Berlin Film Festival on Monday unveiled the titles selected for its official competition and its sidebar Encounters competitive section.

A total of 20 films have been selected for the international competition, with highlights including La Cocina, directed by Alonso Ruiz Palacios and starring Rooney Mara. The pic is described as a “kinetic and cinematic love story” set over a single day in a Times Square kitchen. French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop returns with Dahomey, a 60-minute doc about art repatriation and Hong Sangsoo plays in competition with A Traveler’s Needs, starring Isabelle Huppert. Scroll down for the full lineup.

The Berlin Film Festival takes place February 15-25.

Organizers have already announced more than 100 titles across sidebars spanning Panorama, Forum, and Berlinale Special. Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, a feature documentary about influential British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger narrated by Killers of the Flower Moon...

New films featuring Carey Mulligan, Adam Sandler, Amanda Seyfried, Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough are among 2024 Berlinale Specials lineup, the out-of-competition gala presentations at next year’s Berlin International Film Festival.

Spaceman, a Netflix sci-fi drama from Chernobyl director Johan Renck, starring Sandler, Mulligan, Kunal Nayyar, Isabella Rossellini and Paul Dano, will have its world premiere in the Berlinale Special gala sidebar. Sasquatch Sunset, an adventure comedy from the Zellner brothers which stars Keough, Eisenberg, Nathan Zellner, and Christophe Zajac-Denek, will screen in Berlin after its Sundance debut. Atom Egoyan’s Seven Veils, which had its world premiere in Toronto, and stars Seyfried alongside Rebecca Liddiard, Douglas Smith, Ambur Braid, and Michael Kupfer-Radecky, will also have its international premiere in the Berlinale Specials gala section.

Treasure (aka Iron Box), the 90-set English-language feature from German director Julia von Heinz (And Tomorrow The Entire World), which stars Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry...

The Berlinale has announced the first seven productions, including one series, to be invited to the Berlinale Specials strand of its 74th edition running from February 15 to 25, 2024.

The line-up will include the world premiere of Johan Renck’s sci-fi drama Spaceman starring Adam Sandler as an astronaut on a lone space mission.

The drama, also featuring Carey Mulligan, Kunal Nayyar, Isabella Rossellini and Paul Dano in the cast, goes on worldwide release on Netflix on March 1, 2024

The Sandler sci-fi drama is due to go on worldwide release on Netflix on March 1, 2024.

There will also be international premieres for David and Nathan Zellner’s Sasquatch Sunset, with Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg, Nathan Zellner and Christophe Zajac-Denek, which is due to world premiere at Sundance.

Atom Egoyan’s TIFF-selected Seven Veils, featuring Amanda Seyfried, Rebecca Liddiard, Douglas Smith, Ambur Braid, Michael Kupfer-Radecky in the cast, is also in the line-up.

“We are...

Maura Delpero’s second feature “Vermiglio, the Mountain Bride” – which is being presented at the Venice Production Bridge, the industry program of the Venice Film Festival, this week – has tapped Giuseppe De Domenico as its lead.

The Italian actor, known for “Zero Zero Zero” and Prime Video’s “Bang Bang Baby,” will play Pietro, a young soldier who in 1944 arrives in a small mountain village in Trentino, northern Italy.

As declared by the film’s tagline, change is around the corner: “Last year of World War II. In the Italian Alps, a single rifle shot ends a young woman’s innocence.”

“Maura saw many young actors and some of them were very good, but Giuseppe was able to stand out thanks to his subtle acting style. He understood what it meant to come back from a war,” says Francesca Andreoli, who produces for Italy’s Cinedora.

Roberta Rovelli in Maura Delpero’s “Vermiglio,...

"There isn't a medical explanation." Umi Films + Rai Cinema have revealed a first look teaser trailer for an interesting new Italian film titled Amusia, premiering this month at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (aka PÖFF) in Estonia. Amusia, from the Greek "a-musia," meaning lack of harmony, is a biological musical disorder that causes inability to process, understand and recognize music. In a world saturated with music, Amusia tells the story of a girl who is born without the means to hear it. The disease, and lack of acceptance, push her to run away, finding herself in a forgotten suburban neighbourhood. There she befriends a boy who is fighting his own solitude through music as he tries to prevent his own dreams from rotting away. A love story between two people that turn out to be not so different after all. The film stars Carlotta Gamba as Livia, Giampiero de Concilio,...

Italian twin directors Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo have started shooting in Rome on “Dostoevskij,” an eclectic detective drama involving a policeman with a troubled past.

This first TV series written and directed by the D’Innocenzo brothers – who are known on the festival circuit for dark dramas “Boy’s Cry,” “Bad Tales” and “America Latina” – is an in-house Sky Studios production produced by the Comcast-owned pay-tv player with Rome’s Paco Cinematografica.

Filippo Timi stars as Enzo Vitello, a sharp detective with a troubled past, who winds up on the blood trail of a ruthless serial killer, nicknamed Dostoevskij because of letters full of gruesome details that he leaves at crime scenes.

Haunted by the killer’s words, the policeman embarks on a dangerous solo investigation, getting closer and closer to a disturbing existential truth.

Rounding out the “Dostoevskij” cast are Gabriel Montesi (“Bad Tales”), Carlotta Gamba (“Dante”) and...

It’s been a while since Italian cinema has raised a major enfant terrible, but the country’s film industry firmly believes it has a pair in twin brothers Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo. Hot off a co-writing credit on Matteo Garrone’s “Dogman,” the duo (billed onscreen as The D’Innocenzo Brothers) made a splash and won a prize at last year’s Berlinale with their sophomore feature, the sleek, bleak, nihilistic suburban nightmare “Bad Tales.” Its themes were pretty well-worn, but its darkly chic styling was arresting enough to ensure plenty of chatter trailing their swiftly delivered third film “America Latina.”

Sadly, the hype is unfulfilled by this minor, tricked-out study of extreme midlife crisis, which shows little advancement in the brothers’ storytelling instincts, while underlining their knack for surly mood-building and elegantly sinister imagery. If anything, its thin, oblique blend of arch character study, dreamlike psychodrama and spindly...