Italy’s 2025 Oscars Submission Is An Alpine Wonder Of Beauty & Empathy

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.

It’s also a family dramedy, well-plotted, and equal parts poignant and funny. Though the movie never has to raise its voice, it’s not passive; as it studies character, it also builds narrative. Its themes are many, and they somehow all feel fully explored, but to call it multifaceted would belie the wholeness of it. Vermiglio achieves a kind of cohesion that I can only really explain by waving my hands and invoking the magic of cinema.

Vermiglio Is A Portrait Of A Time, A Place & A Family

With A Romance As Its Key Story Thread

The principal grace of Vermiglio, and its most immediately striking feature, is specificity. It’s named for the remote village in the mountainous northern region of Trentino-Alto Adige, and while it’s importantly Italian, the rest of the world feels miles away. The dialogue is almost entirely in the local dialect (the film plays subtitled in Italian theaters), and writer-director Maura Delpero is very attuned to the rhythms of daily life here. We develop a sense of this place very quickly, and with each step forward, our understanding deepens.

Though Vermiglio can feel like a village out of time, the film is crucially set in 1944; among the movie’s many identities is a war film with no battles. The story centers on a particular family after two deserting soldiers have arrived at their doorstep. One is kin, nephew to Cesare (Tommaso Ragno), our patriarch, and the village schoolteacher. The other, Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico), is Sicilian, meaning he may as well be from another planet. He’s quiet but seems kind, and he quickly catches the eye of Cesare’s oldest daughter, Lucia (Martina Scrinzi).

Their budding romance is the most prominent story thread, but the rest of the family is under the camera’s watchful eye, too. Sometimes we’re watching them individually – Ada (Rachele Potrich), the middle of three sisters, is both the most obedient and the most pious. But she’s discovered desire and self-pleasure, and as much as she wants to stay well-behaved, she finds resisting exceedingly difficult. Her journey through this struggle, which involves monastic acts of penance she designs for herself as (ineffective) deterrents, is endearingly funny.

Sometimes we’re watching their dynamic as a collective. The bonding between sisters, who share a room and huddle for nightly whispers. Cesare’s preference for Flavia (Anna Thaler), his sharp youngest daughter, who he wants to send for further education instead of Ada, who greatly desires it. Little Pietrin (Enrico Panizza) and his adoration for his older brother Dino (Patrick Gardner), who is eternally at odds with his father. The constant pregnancy of the mother, Adele (Roberta Rovelli), at a time when not all infants survive, and how everyone processes that closeness of life and death.

Vermiglio’s Beautiful Images Are Fueled By Empathy

Which Traces Back To The Movie’s Genesis

Each scene in Vermiglio seems to serve several purposes, and I could spend this full review untangling them, examining the feelings and ideas captured in each. But the effect of the whole is that you feel as if you’re really seeing lives being lived. Films are, by nature, selective, and the experiences of women in this constricted time are a focus of Delpero’s selections. But it’s clear everyone on camera is someone she finds interesting.

After seeing it the first time, in Venice, this feeling is what struck me the most. Vermiglio is one of the year’s most beautiful films, and cinematographer Mikhail Krichman uses light in a way that gives the images a velvety softness. Despite the film being exceptionally snowy – consider it in the canon of great wintery atmospheres – its gaze is warm. The camera is unfailingly honest about what it sees but still relays that truth to us lovingly.

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I’m Still Here is all about the profoundness of feeling in an unstable, tumultuous time, and how it rocks the boat of a seemingly stable family.

I noticed this most in how we come to understand Cesare. As the chief instrument of patriarchal will, he is the subject of much critique, often guilty of centering himself at the expense of his loved ones. Delpero gives voice to the grievances of his wife and children and shows us they’re merited. But Vermiglio also approaches him with great empathy, and not just through the depth of feeling in Ragno’s stoic performance. The film sees his beliefs and ambitions. He, too, chafes against the smallness of his life.

When I learned later that Delpero based this family on her own, I understood. Vermiglio was born from the exercise of imagining her father’s life as a child, as a way of processing her grief over his passing, and the emotion that brought her to the film has remained in it. How, exactly, I cannot say; I wonder if Delpero herself could pin it down. But whatever went into the alchemy of her process, the resulting art leaves a lingering impression.

Vermiglio releases in US theaters on Wednesday, December 25. The film is 119 minutes long and is not yet rated.

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8/10

Vermiglio

Pros

• Arthouse’s gentle pacing & human scope backed by a strong story
• Beautiful cinematography that captures the wintery, mountainous atmosphere
• A fully formed ensemble of characters, all portrayed with empathy