Vermiglio

Three sisters - Lucia, Ada en Flavia - living on the verge of adulthood with their father, an equally stern and eccentric teacher. For generations, the family has lived in Vermiglio, an Italian mountain village in the northern region of Trentino-South Tyrol. It's 1944, the Second World War is on its last legs. Most of the conflict took place far from Vermiglio. Until a fateful day in 1944 when World War II comes walking into the village in the person of Pietro. He deserted to bring home an injured friend. Pietro carried him almost the whole trip and is welcomed as a hero. More so, almost like a hero from another country, because he is Sicilian - as a resident of the Italian Alps, you couldn't be further away from a compatriot. He immediately catches Lucia's eye and soon the two become a couple. One that seems born for happiness, but in reality the relationship sets in motion a series of events that seem to be heading for an ominous outcome. It starts with Ada and Flavia feeling abandoned by their eldest sister. It is the beginning of an ever-growing intolerance that even turns into misogyny.

For Vermiglio, director-screenwriter Maura Delpero dug deep into her family history. The teacher, for instance, is partly modelled on her grandfather. The story of the film was brought to her in a dream, by her father as a six-year-old boy. By her own admission, that dream was divided into four parts, each coinciding with a season, and that is also how she constructed this gripping family chronicle. A story, she tells herself, "of children and adults, between deaths and births, disappointments and rebirths, of hold each other tightly as life winds on, and of how a community splits into individuals. About the smell of wood and warm milk on frosty mornings. It is the story of a war, but without bombs or heavy fighting. A story following the uncompromising logic of a mountain that reminds its inhabitants every day how puny they are."