In Vermiglio, the cold bites but it also keeps you alive.

1944. Wartime Italy. Icebound village. Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio (2025) is truly an exquisite winner of the Venice Film Festival’s Grand Jury. The slow-burn family saga unspools the glimpses of joy swallowed by the
void of war. It has the essence of amemoir with the period film rooted in the depths of Delpero’s own family history. Timelessness pulses at the heart of the film, where tradition is a familiar, well-trodden path—especially for the schoolteacher and moral arbiter Cesare (Tommaso Ragno), whose esteemed position is built upon upholding age-old customs. The story follows his exhaustingly pregnant wife, Adele (Robera Rovelli) and their many children’s lives. In the backdrop, hunger looms, casting a shadow of enduring struggle.

A serene suffocation permeates the snowy alpine landscape where fragile beauty veils seemingly queer moments. Cesare’s well-mannered daughter Ada (Rachele Potrich) and her intense friendship with a rebel smoker who she admires (Carlotta Gamba), exposes the fragile dance between yearning and reality. Ada finds herself seeking contraband in her father’s drawer, pleasuring herself behind cupboards and eats chicken poop as penance.

The more present thread in the familial tapestry is the romance which unfolds between Cesare’s eldest doe-eyed daughter Lucia (Martina Scrinzi) and the charismatic lost soldier Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico). Their enchanting tale has the resonance of ‘star- cross’d lovers’, or perhaps mountain-crossed lovers with the peaks they climb in every sense of the word. She falls pregnant and whispers of unspoken truths soon become
screams. Then silence falls again. The casting is sublime. Every actor embodied their role with nuance that it was impossible not to be drawn into the familial dynamics. The delicate interplay of desire to please and subtle favouritism felt authentic and the innocence of the sisters was tender, from the intimate late-night talks to curious confessionals.

The symphony of mundanity, from the birdsong to the cows, can at times be soporific. Despite the occasional lull, each frame of Mikhail Krichman’s cinematography feels worthwhile. It makes space for a simmering undercurrent of sorrow, and does well to delineate the narrative without the shades of icy blue melding into each other. Every minute is distinct. The impeccable craft, however, suffers at times because of the overly complex, meandering narrative that struggles to remain focused on the family mosaic.

The dynamic between Caesar and his resentful son Dino becomes one too many threads to follow. In turn, it leads to a blurred and underdeveloped scattershot of some of the children’s lives. Lucia’s plotline is one that felt it needed more depth as she grappled with much more than the difficulties of motherhood. The omnipresent aura of fate’s cruel design is poignant. The frosty portrait of fragile existence morphs into a tender meditation on loss, longing and surviving. Adele and Cesare’s marriage takes on the symbolic significance of a ticking clock. Adele’s pregnancy marks the passage of time and the inevitable return of old patterns: a stark muted chaos.

In Vermiglio, the cold bites but it also keeps you alive.