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.
Principal photography started on 28 August 2023,[1] and shootings wrapped in December.[4] The film was shot between the Vermiglio, Carciato and Comasine towns in the Trentino-Alto Adige region.[5] It is produced by Cinedora (Italy), Charades (France), and Versus (Belgium).[6] 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.[7][8]
The film received general positive reviews by critics.[12][13] On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 90% of 10 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7/10.[14]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 77 out of 100, based on 6 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[15]
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".[16]
Italian critics
The film received favorable reviews from Italian film critics.[17][18] 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".[19] Federico Pontiggia of Cinematografo stated that the film synthesizes "the previous documentary experience, with greater ambition, free will and calmness", deeming "the direction of actors excellent, the anti-spectacular hold valuable, the poetry of war and peace admirable, we have a lady author: Maura Delpero".[20]
