Vermiglio

Vermiglio, a high mountain village in the Italian Alps, 1944. A soldier fleeing the war takes shelter there, and the balance among the three sisters in the schoolteacher's house comes apart. The film is not interested in the front. It is interested in how indirectly war reaches a village: news arrives late, deaths are announced by letter, and the real question is who will marry and who will study, which means the father's decision. The form follows the seasons: snow, thaw, harvest, snow again. The scenes are long, the dialogue sparse, the camera still, and the daily work of the village is filmed with something like documentary attention. Some of the cast come from the region and speak in the local dialect. Maura Delpero wrote and directed, drawing on her own family history and the area her father came from. The film won the Grand Jury Prize, the Silver Lion, at the Venice Film Festival in 2024 and was submitted as Italy's entry for the Academy Awards. Who it is for: viewers who like slow cinema, period film and rural narratives centred on women. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events. Almost nothing happens in the first hour and the dramatic break comes very late.