Vermiglio

A large family shares a house in the alpine village of Vermiglio during the closing months of the Second World War. Cesare, the schoolteacher, presides over his wife and their many children with quiet, unquestioned authority. A deserting soldier, Pietro, shelters in the village and grows close to the eldest daughter, Lucia. Their attachment leads to a marriage and, in time, to a loss the household absorbs without fully naming it.

Delpero filmed in the real village of her father's family, pairing professional actors with local non-professionals. Critics from Venice noted its patience and refusal of melodrama: a chronicle told in seasons, in small domestic gestures, in weather and liturgy. The jury awarded it the Grand Jury Prize, the festival's second highest honour, and reviewers praised the observational calm that lets ordinary life carry the weight.

The film studies a household in which the most consequential things go unspoken. Cesare's word governs the home, and shame passes downward through silence rather than speech. It watches female desire press against religious and paternal constraint, and traces how a death reorganises loyalties and forces buried facts toward the surface.