Vermiglio

There is a specific kind of silence that only exists in high-altitude villages buried under six feet of snow—a quiet so heavy it feels like a physical weight on your chest. Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio lives in that silence. Set in 1944 in a remote mountain hamlet in the Italian Alps, the film doesn’t open with the rattle of machine guns or the roar of planes. Instead, we get the rhythmic breathing of cows in a barn and the scratch of a fountain pen against paper. It’s a war movie where the war is a distant, ugly rumor, yet it manages to be more devastating than many films that actually set foot on a battlefield.

I watched this while eating a slightly stale biscotti I’d found in the back of my pantry, and the dry crunch felt oddly appropriate for a film so focused on the textures of a world defined by scarcity.

The Architecture of Isolation

At the center of the village is Cesare, played with a weary, intellectual flintiness by Tommaso Ragno. He is the local schoolmaster, a man who treats Virgil and Donizetti as the only defenses against the encroaching provincialism of his neighbors. He’s the patriarch of a sprawling family, including his wife Adele (Roberta Rovelli) and a gaggle of children who seem to exist in a state of perpetual chores.

The family dynamic is captured with a startling, unpolished intimacy. Delpero doesn’t lean into the "noble peasant" tropes we often see in historical dramas. These people are tired, they are sometimes mean, and they are frequently bored. When a deserting Sicilian soldier named Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico) arrives in town, carrying a wounded villager on his back, he’s less a hero and more a curiosity—a splash of Mediterranean heat in a landscape of ice.

The eldest daughter, Lucia (Martina Scrinzi), is the first to fall under his spell. Their romance isn't built on witty banter; it’s built on stolen glances in the shadows of the stable and the shared realization that there is a world beyond the peaks that circle them like prison walls. Watching this movie feels like being slowly turned into a human popsicle, but in a weirdly comforting way.

The Russian Eye on the Italian Peak

One of the most striking things about Vermiglio is how it looks. Delpero made a brilliant, albeit unexpected, choice in hiring Mikhail Krichman as her cinematographer. Krichman is the man responsible for the bleak, haunting visuals of Andrey Zvyagintsev’s films (Leviathan, Loveless), and he brings that same "Russian gloom" to the Italian Alps.

Instead of the postcard-perfect vistas you’d find in a tourism brochure, Krichman gives us interiors that look like Caravaggio paintings—deep shadows, faces illuminated by a single candle, and a color palette of browns, grays, and whites. The camera often stays still, letting the actors move through the frame, which makes the eventual bursts of movement feel earned.

This visual restraint mirrors the film’s narrative. Delpero, who drew inspiration from her own father’s childhood stories in the real village of Vermiglio, chose to cast many non-professional actors from the region. This adds a layer of authenticity to the dialect and the physical way the characters handle tools or navigate the snow. They don’t look like actors playing dress-up; they look like people whose hands have been permanently reddened by the cold. It’s a choice that reflects a broader trend in contemporary cinema—a move toward hyper-local stories that find universal truths in specific, forgotten corners of history.

A Modern Take on the Traditional

While Vermiglio is a period piece, it feels very much like a product of our current cinematic moment. It arrived at the Venice Film Festival (where it scooped up the Silver Lion) at a time when audiences seem to be craving "slow cinema" as a sedative for the frantic pace of streaming content. It’s also a film that places female interiority at its heart, focusing on the domestic ripples caused by male violence and desertion.

When the war finally ends, the tragedy that hits the family isn't a bomb or a bullet; it’s a secret from the past that arrives via a letter. This shift from the communal struggle of the war to a private, shattering heartbreak is where the film finds its real power. It’s the kind of movie that makes you want to delete every social media app and go milk a cow in 1944, right up until you remember how much those people suffered from the lack of antibiotics and central heating.

The film does ask for your patience. It moves with the seasons, and if you’re looking for a fast-paced plot, you might find yourself checking your watch. But if you let the atmosphere wash over you, the payoff is immense. The performances by Orietta Notari as Zia Cesira and Carlotta Gamba as the rebellious Virginia provide excellent support to the central tragedy, painting a portrait of a community that is simultaneously supportive and suffocating.

Vermiglio is a haunting, painterly achievement that proves you don’t need a massive budget to tell a story that feels epic in scope. Maura Delpero has crafted a film that functions as both a historical record and a deeply personal ghost story. It’s a reminder that even when the world is ending, life persists in the small things: a lesson in a classroom, the birth of a child, and the way the light hits the snow at dusk. By the time the credits roll, you’ll feel like you’ve lived through that winter yourself, and you’ll be much more grateful for your modern thermostat.