Vermiglio (film)

Vermiglio is a 2024 drama film written, co-produced and directed by Maura Delpero. The film premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. It was designated as the Italian entry for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards.

Plot

1944, 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.

Cast

Giuseppe De Domenico as Pietro Riso
Tommaso Ragno as Cesare Graziadei
Martina Scrinzi as Lucia Graziadei
Roberta Rovelli as Adele
Carlotta Gamba as Virginia
Orietta Notari as Zia Cesira
Sara Serraiocco as Anna Pennisi

Production

Principal photography started on 28 August 2023, and shootings wrapped in December. The film was shot between the Vermiglio, Carciato and Comasine towns in the Trentino-Alto Adige region. It is produced by Cinedora (Italy), Charades (France), and Versus (Belgium). Delpero decided to make the film after her father's death as a way to help ensure that the traditions in which he had grown up were not lost, including conducting many interviews with local people during pre-production.

Release

The film world-premiered in competition at the 81st Venice International Film Festival. It made its North American premiere at the 49th Toronto International Film Festival.

It was featured in the Limelight section of the 54th International Film Festival Rotterdam to be screened in February 2025.

Reception

Critical response

The film received general positive reviews by critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 58 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The website's consensus reads: "Painterly and patient, Vermiglio carefully observes its provincial milieu to such absorbing effect that audiences will feel like they've become a part of the community." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 85 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Jessica Kiang of Variety affirmed that "economy" is the watchword of "deceptively formalist" film, that results from "deceptively formalist" direction, editing, musical compositions to costumes, contributing "to a fascinating narrative remove, which is belied by the close-up clarity of the imagery". Kiang wrote that although the plot is set in the past, it "operates like a future family secret playing out in the present tense" through " the spirit of the mothers and the sisters and the daughters who came before and after, and who trusted the imperious mountains to keep their secrets".

Italian critics

The film received favorable reviews from Italian film critics. Mattia Pasquini of Ciak wrote that like the previous film Maternal the screenplay is about the mother-child relationship set on an "extremely refined framework, both linguistically, stylistically and narratively coherent and homogeneous". Federico Pontiggia of Cinematografo stated that the film draws on "[Delpero's] prior documentary experience with greater ambition, free will and calmness," observing that "the direction of actors is excellent, the anti-spectacle concept is cohesive and confident, the poetry of war and peace is marvelous. Here we have a consummate auteur: Maura Delpero."