The 24th Open Roads: New Italian Cinema returns to Film at Lincoln Center in New York City, running from May 29 to June 5, 2025 showcasing contemporary Italian filmmaking.
This year’s edition presents 14 new feature films, with many of the filmmakers present to discuss their films.
The festival opens with the New York premiere of Francesca Comencini’s latest film, The Time It Takes, which is nominated for six David di Donatello awards, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor for its star, Fabrizio Gifuni, who will be present for a Q&A. The film is a deeply personal cinematic autobiography about Comencini’s relationship with her legendary filmmaker father, Luigi Comencini. Romana Maggiora Vergano, who plays Francesca, won the Pasinetti Award for Best Actress at its Venice Film Festival debut.
Highlights include Francesco Costabile’s Familia, a tense family drama and exploration of political extremism, nominated for eight Donatello Awards; Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio’s documentary Canone effimero, a tribute to the local musical customs of Italy’s varied regions, which received a Special Mention from the Documentary Award jury at the 2024 Berlinale; the North American premiere of Gianni Amelio’s Battleground, a gripping WWII parable about courage and compassion; Ferzan Özpetek’s Diamonds, an homage to costume design set in a 1970s Roman fashion house; and the latest film from Silvia Luzi and Luca Bellino, Luce, a portrait of a lonely leatherworker stifled by her surroundings.
Making their Open Roads debut are Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman with Vittoria, about a hairdresser navigating the world of adoption in search of a young girl who appears in her dreams, and Peter Kerekes with Wishing on a Star, a fiction/documentary hybrid that investigates the current state of human bonds through an astrologer and her efforts to help her clients find love.
Award-winning actor Elio Germano stars in two standout selections this year. He won Best Actor at the Rome Film Festival for his role as Enrico Berlinguer, former leader of the Italian Communist Party, in Andrea Segre’s The Great Ambition, which makes its North American premiere. Germano also appears alongside Toni Servillo in the New York premiere of Sicilian Letters by Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia, a bold take on the Italian crime film that earned multiple critics’ awards at Venice.
North American premieres of additional emerging voices from Italy making their first Open Roads appearances and feature film debuts are: Liryc Dela Cruz’s Where the Night Stands Still, centering on the reunion of three Filipino siblings and their lingering resentments after the eldest inherits a villa from her boss; Isabella Torre’s hypnotic Basileia, making its North American premiere following its Closing Film selection at the 2024 Venice Film Festival’s Venice Days sidebar, about the supernatural consequences of an illegal archaeological dig in southern Calabria; and Alissa Jung’s Paternal Leave, a sensitive story of a daughter reconnecting with her father, which made its world premiere at the Berlinale. Finally, the New York premiere of Sara Fgaier’s feature debut, Weightless, is about an amnesiac’s efforts to recover his memories of a forgotten love.
Open Roads: New Italian Cinema is co-presented by Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà.
2025 Open Roads: New Italian Cinema Films & Descriptions
All films will screen at the Walter Reade Theater (165 W. 65th Street).
Opening Night
The Time It Takes / Il tempo che ci vuole
Francesca Comencini, 2024, Italy/France, 110m
Italian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
In this deeply personal film about her relationship with her father, legendary filmmaker Luigi Comencini, Francesca Comencini’s (Stories of Love That Cannot Belong to This World, Open Roads 2018) virtuosic work of cinematic autobiography paints a richly emotional picture of their changing bond. Young Francesca (first-time actress Anna Mangiocavallo) and her father Luigi (an astonishing Fabrizio Gifuni) live together during the Years of Lead; they share a love of cinema (Luigi is in the middle of shooting an adaptation of Pinocchio), but their love for one another is tested both by the passage of time and by the convulsions of this turbulent period in Italian politics. A film suffused with empathy and self-reflection, The Time It Takes finds Comencini in top form, rendering the intensity and complications of the father-daughter relationship with a rare authenticity. The film earned six Donatello Award nominations, and Romana Maggiora Vergano, who plays the adult Francesca, won the Pasinetti Award for best actress at its Venice Film Festival debut. A Distrib Films release.
Basileia
Isabella Torre, 2024, Italy, 90m
English, Italian, and Danish with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Nature seeks her revenge in Isabella Torre’s hypnotic debut feature, an enigmatic and powerfully atmospheric work that might best be described as an eco-horror film. Set in Aspromonte (a massif in southern Calabria), the film begins by introducing us to the region’s rugged, mist-shrouded landscape, before a mysterious figure known only as “the Irishman” appears. It turns out he is involved with an illegal archaeological dig, the results of which seem to unleash a supernatural wrath on those who would disrupt the balance between the human and natural domains…. A thoroughly stylish film of ideas disguised as an eerie genre exercise, Basileia is an impressive and provocative debut indeed. Closing Night at 2024 Venice Days.
Battleground / Campo di Battaglia
Gianni Amelio, 2024, Italy, 104m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Open Roads veteran Gianni Amelio (Lord of the Ants, Open Roads 2023) returns with this powerful parable about courage and compassion under extreme pressure. Alessandro Borghi is mesmerizing as Giulio, a doctor at a military hospital during WWI who does what he can to help wounded soldiers (and soldiers who have wounded themselves in an effort to be discharged). His foil is none other than fellow doctor Stefano (Gabriel Montesi), who is as harsh and severe with the soldiers as Giulio is accommodating and compassionate. An elegantly executed work of historical fiction, Battleground is a sober and profound meditation on the toll of war. Premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
Canone effimero
Gianluca De Serio, Massimiliano De Serio, 2024, Italy, 120m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
In their latest documentary, which received a Special Mention from the Documentary Award jury at the 2024 Berlinale, the De Serio brothers (Una Promessa, Open Roads 2021) pay tribute to the local musical customs of Italy’s disparate regions, capturing these traditions at risk of fading away. Divided into 11 sections, Canone effimero alternates between loving, languorous portraits of choir members, scholars of medieval musical theories, and specialists in arcane, mostly forgotten historical instruments, and the landscapes in which these figures undertake their cultural homage. Filming with a visual ingenuity that forms a mesmerizing counterpoint to the pleasures of listening to strange, beautiful music and of hearing experts speak intelligently about it, the De Serios honor their subjects with this meticulously, passionately assembled study of cultural traditions on the brink of vanishing.
Diamonds / Diamanti
Ferzan Özpetek, 2024, Italy, 135m
Italian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
The great Ferzan Özpetek (Naples in Veils, Open Roads 2018) returns to Open Roads with his latest, an absorbing, humorous, and touching tribute to the majesty of the movie costume. Luisa Ranieri and Jasmine Trinca star as Alberta and Gabriella, two sisters who preside over a Roman fashion house during the 1970s; we follow as they and the virtuoso dressmakers they employ try to fulfill a challenging order from an Oscar-winning costume designer client, setting the stage for myriad dramas both within and outside the atelier. A considerable box office hit upon its Italian release, Diamonds is Özpetek at his very best, commanding a dazzling ensemble cast to achieve a rich, thoroughly entertaining love letter to screen clothes and the perseverance and talent of the women who make them. Winner of the David degli Spettatori (audience award) at the 2025 Donatello Awards. An Outsider Pictures release.
Familia
Francesco Costabile, 2024, Italy, 120m
Italian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
A harrowing, white-knuckle family portrait and meditation on the terrible appeal of political extremism, Francesco Costabile’s (The Code of Silence, Open Roads 2022) latest adapts Luigi Celeste’s memoir Non sarà sempre così, a staggering account of the author’s falling in with a group of ultra-right-wing skinheads. Luigi (Francesco Gheghi, winner of the Orizzonti Award for best actor at the 2024 Venice Film Festival) has grown up with his mother (an excellent Barbara Ronchi) and younger brother (Marco Cicalese) in the shadow of his violently abusive and mostly absent father (Francesco Di Leva). When his father reappears on the scene, Luigi finds himself caught between the imperative to protect his family from further trauma and the fraught sense of belonging he derives from running with a gang of fascists as his “chosen” family. Familia has been nominated for eight Donatello Awards.
The Great Ambition / Berlinguer. La grande ambizione
Andrea Segre, 2024, Italy/Belgium/Bulgaria, 123m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
The great Elio Germano stars as Enrico Berlinguer in Andrea Segre’s moving and intelligently plotted biopic, nominated for 15 Donatello Awards. The film follows Berlinguer between 1973 and 1978—as the then-leader of the Italian Communist Party, Berlinguer finds himself caught by the tides of history and the political convulsions of the 1970s. Germano, who took home the award for best actor at the Rome Festival, is excellent as a man who, in scenes both spectacularly public and intimately personal, gracefully bears the weight of the world on his shoulders while trying to preserve the integrity of his convictions.
Luce
Silvia Luzi, Luca Bellino, 2024, Italy, 95m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
A character study pitched at the boundary between reality and dreams, Silvia Luzi and Luca Bellino’s (Crater, Open Roads 2018) new feature, which premiered at the 2024 Locarno Film Festival, is an absorbing work that explores the subjectivity of a lonely woman stifled by her environment. Marianna Fontana stars as an anonymous leatherworker in mountainous southern Italy who leads a solitary life amid harsh industrial conditions. She enlists the help of a photographer to fly a drone over a prison wall in the hopes of connecting with her incarcerated father, and this becomes the inciting incident for a mesmerizing headlong journey into a realm beyond the true and the false, the real and the imagined. Fontana is entrancing as our on-screen surrogate, and Luzi and Bellino’s camera relentlessly traces the contours of her face to capture the transformation of desire into obsession.
Paternal Leave
Alissa Jung, 2025, Italy/Germany, 113m
English, Italian, and German with English subtitles
North American Premiere
A touching story of familial reconnection, Alissa Jung’s debut feature, which had its world premiere at the 2025 Berlinale, orbits around the alluring and sensitive performances of its two lead actors. Leo (Juli Grabenhenrich) is a 15-year-old girl who has grown up in Germany without ever knowing her father, Paolo (Luca Marinelli); upon learning of his identity, Leo sets out to meet Paolo, confronting him at a bar in coastal northern Italy. The experience leaves Paolo totally bewildered, but as the two spend more time together, a long overdue bond begins to take root. Marinelli is particularly moving, turning in a nuanced, dimensional performance as a father caught between the life he knows and the daughter he never had the chance to know.
Sicilian Letters / Iddu
Antonio Piazza, Fabio Grassadonia, 2024, Italy/France, 122m
Italian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
In the new film by Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia (Sicilian Ghost Story, Open Roads 2018), Matteo (Elio Germano), a fugitive mob boss in hiding, begins a curious correspondence with a former acquaintance of his father’s, his godfather Catello (Toni Servillo), a corrupt politician fresh off a prison sentence. Their letters find the two men quickly re-forming their friendship, but this bond is complicated by the fact that Catello is not-so-secretly helping the police to locate and capture Matteo, plus Catello has his own agenda…. Inspired by real events and fueled by magnetic performances from Germano and Servillo, Sicilian Letters finds Piazza and Grassadonia once again revitalizing our sense of the Italian crime film. The film took home multiple critics’ awards at its Venice Film Festival premiere.
Vittoria
Alessandro Cassigoli, Casey Kauffman, 2024, Italy, 83m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Filmmaker Alessandro Cassigoli and journalist Casey Kauffman team up for their fourth feature-length collaboration, a powerful portrait of a woman navigating the vagaries of international adoption. Hairdresser Jasmine (Marilena Amato, a non-professional actress playing a version of herself) lives in Naples with her husband and three sons; following her father’s death, Jasmine has a recurring dream of a young girl running into her arms, and these dreams set in motion a quest for her to find this girl, risking her family’s tenuous stability in the process. A fascinating and complex work that uses reenactment to blur the lines between fiction and documentary, Vittoria is a deeply moving investigation into the maternal instinct and the psychological intricacies of adoption. The film had its world premiere in the Orizzonti Extra program at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
Weightless / Sulla terra leggeri
Sara Fgaier, 2024, Italy, 94m
Italian and French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
In her debut feature, which premiered at the 2024 Locarno Film Festival, Sara Fgaier has crafted an emotionally and formally sophisticated monument to the link between cinema and memory. Ethnomusicologist Gian (Andrea Renzi) has suddenly developed amnesia; following a failed suicide attempt, his daughter Miriam (Sara Serraiocco), whom he no longer recognizes, gives him a diary he wrote in his twenties that details a love affair with a mysterious woman. A deluge of flashbacks (punctuated with striking use of archival footage) follows as Gian seeks to recover his memory of this woman while also asking himself how he could’ve forgotten her in the first place. A stylish and assured debut, Weightless sensitively and thoughtfully poses an agonizing question: How would it feel to forget the love of your life?
Where the Night Stands Still / Come la notte
Liryc Dela Cruz, 2025, Italy/Philippines, 75m
Tagalog and Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Three Filipino siblings who are all domestic workers living in Italy reunite at the villa that the eldest sister has inherited from her recently deceased boss. Not having seen each other in three years, their reunion dredges up old feelings, lingering resentments, and the melancholic distance that has formed between them in the intervening years. In his strikingly photographed black-and-white debut feature, which premiered at the 2025 Berlinale, Liryc Dela Cruz juxtaposes the pains and hopes of the siblings’ bond to their almost eternal-seeming setting, the villa asserting itself as one of the film’s most crucial characters, a still, well-worn witness to untold histories.
Wishing on a Star
Peter Kerekes, 2024, Italy/Croatia/Austria/Slovakia/Czech Republic, 99m
Italian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
A fiction/documentary hybrid that undertakes a charmingly idiosyncratic investigation into the present state of human connection, Peter Kerekes’s Wishing on a Star follows a Neapolitan astrologer and her efforts to help her clients find love. Her clients all face one domestic complication or another in pursuit of a relationship, so she advises them to set out on a trip to various locales whose astral signs might be more conducive to finding what their hearts desire. Kerekes renders the results with a nose for the absurd and (however inadvertently) profound, but also with a warmth, openness, and willingness to play with the formal properties of cinema to arrive at a tender, sophisticated study of the lengths people will go for a chance at happiness. The film premiered in the Orizzonti program at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.