My Tennis Maestro

Raul Gatti was once a serious tennis player; now he coaches at provincial clubs and has never settled the accounts left over from his past. Felice, thirteen, is drowning inside the programme his father built around a dream of an international future: training every day, a tournament every week, no childhood at all. The two meet on a court, and the first thing Raul teaches is not a stroke. The film is not interested in success but in a boy finding what he himself wants. The father is not written as a villain, he simply does not know how to stop; Raul is not a good example, only an honest one. The boy caught between them cannot satisfy anybody. Andrea Di Stefano directed and co-wrote with Ludovica Rampoldi. Pierfrancesco Favino plays Raul. Matteo Cocco shot it and it runs 125 minutes. It premiered out of competition at the 82nd Venice Film Festival on 31 August 2025 and opened in Italy on 13 November 2025. Who it is for: anyone who likes master-and-pupil stories told through sport, and Favino. Who it is not for: anyone wanting tennis excitement. There is little match footage, the running time is long, and the father is softened too easily in the last stretch.