VERMIGLIO

Grand Jury Prize winner at Venice and Italy’s Oscar entry, this film tells the story of a deserter in the aftermath of the Second World War who arrives in an Italian Alps village far removed from those horrors, where he stirs the hearts of the local schoolteacher and his children. Following her fiction debut Maternal (awarded at Locarno), Maura Delpero transitions from personal memory – her own origins – to collective memory in this acclaimed rustic epic about a family saga bearing witness to a changing world. Compared to the cinema of Ermanno Olmi and the Taviani brothers, this film evokes the life cycle with authenticity, restraint and the stunning cinematography of Mikhail Krichman (collaborator of Andrey Zvyagintsev and SEFF 2014 award-winner for Leviathan). Without bombs or big battles, it zooms in on the lives of those who do not typically feature in war films but also suffered from them.