A new generation of Italian filmmakers is making its presence felt at the Venice Film Festival, bringing fresh ideas and unconventional approaches while remaining connected to the country’s rich cinematic tradition.
Among them are Paolo Strippoli, brothers Tommaso and Piero Usberti, Emanuele Maria Di Stefano and Romana Maggiora Vergano — artists in their 20s and 30s who are increasingly finding opportunities to tell stories on their own terms.
At 33, Strippoli is the youngest director competing at Venice this year. His latest film, L’estranea, follows a mother, played by Jasmine Trinca, who reveals to her daughter, portrayed by Romana Maggiora Vergano, that she made a mysterious pact with a woman two decades earlier — and that the time has come to pay the price.
The film, which follows Strippoli’s earlier works Piove and La valle dei sorrisi, is another step in a career that has already attracted a growing young audience.
But Strippoli hopes the attention surrounding his work will extend beyond his own career.
“I hope it turns toward a generation rather than toward me,” he says.
A different kind of Italian cinema
Following Francesco Sossai, whose Le città di pianura has attracted both audiences and awards, a group of younger Italian filmmakers is beginning to explore territory that sits outside the traditional boundaries of Italian cinema.
Horror, dark comedy, grotesque storytelling and unconventional social dramas are among the genres being embraced by directors looking for new ways to tell stories.
They are also finding established actors willing to take risks alongside them. At the same time, a new generation of performers is emerging.
Di Stefano, for example, brings intensity and anger to the role of Luca Varani in Edoardo Gabbriellini’s La città dei vivi.
Strippoli, meanwhile, worked with Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, who plays the mysterious tempter in L’estranea. She was won over by the young director’s precise approach.
“He knew exactly what he wanted,” she says.
For Strippoli, the difficulties faced by young filmmakers are familiar. He now teaches at Italy’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and says he regularly encounters students with both talent and a strong desire to work in genre cinema.
“I see very capable young people who desperately want to make genre films, and I think it will be difficult for them,” he says. “It was difficult for me too.”
Beyond being called ‘young’
Strippoli attributes his own progress to a combination of good decisions and luck, but believes the industry needs to do more than simply celebrate young filmmakers as an exception.
“I feel privileged,” he says. “But I think it is important that people in their 30s are making films, in their own way and with real opportunities. The perspective of a 30-year-old is just as important as that of previous generations.”
He recalls attending an event where a director in his 50s, already making his second film, was introduced as a “very young filmmaker”.
“For me, that means there is a problem,” he says.
His hope is that the current attention surrounding younger directors will lead to actual opportunities rather than simply labels.
“What matters is making films and giving younger directors confidence, without constantly calling them young directors,” he says.
Maggiora Vergano, who is working with Strippoli for the second time, feels that the project represents her own generation as much as his.
“I belong to Paolo’s generation,” she says. “I studied at a film school surrounded by ambitious directors my age. This project excites me because it represents the kind of writing we like — the kind of cinema we want to see as people in our 30s.”
The Usberti brothers and a darker Italy
The Usberti brothers, Tommaso and Piero, are another example of the emerging generation.
Their film Prima della guerra is being presented at Venice’s Critics’ Week, with Tommaso directing and Piero acting.
Set in the Po Valley, the film explores a community shaped by silence and a brutal understanding of masculinity. Respect is earned through violence, racism and a deeply unhealthy idea of what it means to be a man.
The film continues a trend among younger Italian filmmakers of using specific places and communities to explore broader social tensions.
Kafka in the suburbs
The D’Innocenzo brothers, Damiano and Fabio, have also contributed to this new wave, co-writing Serpenti with Roberto De Paolis.
De Paolis directs the film, which places a Kafkaesque story inside an ordinary suburban police station. Leonardo Lidi plays the central character, surrounded by actors including Alessandro Borghi, Sergio Castellitto and Valeria Golino.
A man confesses to killing a woman, but nobody seems willing to listen.
De Paolis says he was looking for a story that could be both sharp and original. The police station becomes a miniature version of society itself, populated by distracted officers, legal technicalities, fortune tellers and incompetent lawyers.
Established stars taking risks
The movement is not limited to directors working entirely outside the established industry.
Edoardo Pesce has joined first-time director Marco Santi for Il grande Giaffa, a film centred on a chaotic night that spirals out of control.
Riccardo Scamarcio has taken on both acting and producing duties for Tommaso Landucci’s Figli della scimmia. The film follows a father struggling to confront his own sense of inadequacy after his son develops a severe disability.
Landucci spent five years bringing the project to the screen.
During that time, he worked as an assistant director in advertising, including productions involving slow-motion shots of food and pasta commercials.
“That is the struggle,” he says. “You do another job and hope that something will eventually happen.”
Funding remains a major obstacle
For all the creative energy surrounding this new generation, making a film in Italy remains difficult.
The latest available figures for selective public funding, published in July, show that 11 of 27 projects submitted in the young directors category received support. Among first and second films, 16 of 64 projects were funded.
Other opportunities have emerged through initiatives such as Biennale College Cinema, which can take a project from development to a completed film within a year, with funding of €200,000.
Landucci points to his friendship with Sossai as evidence that something broader may be developing.
“I think it is a wave that is increasingly speaking to audiences abroad as well,” he says.
Scamarcio believes the industry needs to become more willing to take risks.
“We need to raise the bar a little and take bigger risks,” he says.
Does he mean financial risks?
“Those too, of course. But also risks in terms of what we want to say and how we want to make films. It is something that both young and established filmmakers need.”
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