An Italian year: a superb learning story (review)

The second feature film by Italian Laura Samani, combining the plot of a 1929 novel and autobiographical elements, reveals a group of young actors who are all amazing.

For her second feature film – after Piccolo corpo, in 2022 – the Italian Laura Samani imagines a hybrid scenario, born from the amalgamation of the plot of a novel dating from 1929 (A School Year, Giani Stuparich) and autobiographical elements. Her double on screen is Fred (Stella Wendick), a Swedish student transferred to a technological establishment in the north-east of Italy in the 2000s. In the middle of this bubbling of testosterone (an exclusively male high school population), a group of boys take her under their wing. And the four friends throw themselves headlong into these adolescent wanderings where innocence soon no longer has its place.

There is, in An Italian yearsomething of the American teen movie and its observation of the first vicissitudes of love, but also of these learning stories inherited from naturalist literature. The bitterness of disillusionment is sublimated by a photograph playing with contrasts of light and shadow, hollows and fullness. Launched in all directions according to these essentially melancholic chiaroscuros and sometimes almost pictorial, the band of amateur performers – Stella Wendick, Giacomo Covi, Pietro Giustolisi and Samuel Volturno –, unearthed by the director and her casting director burst the screen… and hearts.

By Laura Samani. With Stella Wendick, Giacomo Covi, Pietro Giustolisi… Duration: 1h42. Released June 10, 2026