Italy’s entry for Best International Feature at the 2025 Academy Awards is a pastoral slice-of-life capturing a remote Italian community during the Second World War. In the Alpine countryside village of Vermiglio, the front line barely registers even in 1944; life continues in routine and custom as it has for generations.
The rural community centres around the large Graziadei family, whose patriarch Cesare (Tommaso Ragno) is the school teacher who counts the local children and adults among his students. This role quietly gives him immense power in bureaucratic and social affairs. His children have their own predilections and struggles – some within Cesare’s lessons – and his wife Adele (Roberta Rovelli) frowns upon the way he spends money on vinyl records; he defends the purchases as necessary for the soul, if not for putting food on the table – thankfully she does not know about his private stash of pornographic photographs.
The routines of animal husbandry and market days are barely interrupted by the arrival of Pietro Riso (Giuseppe De Domenico), a soldier who deserted Mussolini’s army and seeks refuge from both retribution and his battlefield trauma. He captures the eye and heart of Cesare’s eldest daughter Lucia (Martina Scrinzi), and a love affair blossoms, with a swift wedding on the horizon. Thus, the wheels of destiny are set in motion.
Not much happens in VERMIGLIO, but writer and director Maura Delpero fleshes out every facet of physical and psychological truth. The cinematography by Mikhail Krichman, favouring cool colours, captures the winter landscapes’ natural beauty; through his lens, the difficulties and bounties of the often-romanticised farm life are presented with no gloss or exaggeration.
“Quiet human interactions and quirks provide the meat of each scene, and the story arc that flows from Pietro and Lucia’s romance is a gentle current rather than a torrent that sweeps all else away.”
Quiet human interactions and quirks provide the meat of each scene, and the story arc that flows from Pietro and Lucia’s romance is a gentle current rather than a torrent that sweeps all else away. All characters are well defined, almost extravagantly so; the secret habits and scholarly aptitudes (or lack thereof) of Cesare’s many children do not contribute to Petro and Lucia’s love story that loosely defines the plot, but VERMIGLIO would be a less satisfying film without these mundane fancies.
Ultimately, however, VERMIGLIO may be too gentle to impact viewers, prioritising the quotidian above dramatic impetus and almost overwhelming the latter. When the plot comes knocking with a seismic reveal in the third act, the manner of its discovery and ensuing ripples in the community feel unduly muted. Scrinzi’s performance, however, is magnetic enough to carry the weight of events and Lucia’s wholly committed choices, enhancing the poignancy of the film’s closing chapter in a way that mirrors the arcs of the lives on screen. VERMIGLIO is a beautiful neorealist throwback that shows the power of detailed, naturalistic characterisation.