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Italian movies Ancora Domani (There’s still tomorrowThe film, set in Rome just after World War II and shot entirely in black and white, begins with a man slapping his wife in the face just after she wakes up and says “good morning.”
Acts of resistance large and small at a time when Italian women were seen as family property and treated as such by the law, daily domestic violence, troubled mother-daughter relationships, and the working class suffering from acts of resistance large and small. It depicts a family.
Such tough fare may seem destined for the international arthouse circuit.still Ancora Domani ‘ was a phenomenal box office hit in Japan and struck a nerve in a society currently concerned about deep-rooted masculinity and intimate partner violence against women.
Paola Cortelesi, who directed, co-wrote and starred in the film, said she wanted to make a “contemporary film set in the past” so that her young daughter could understand Italian women’s struggle for rights and dignity. I was thinking. “Men still think of women as their own, a kind of property,” she told me.
Last fall, just days after the film was released, 22-year-old university student Giulia Cecchettin was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, a crime that galvanized Italian society. Her family publicly blamed her death on a culture that disregards women’s lives.
At her funeral, broadcast live on state television, her father called for an end to the “terrible epidemic” of femicide in Italy. In Italy, 97 women have been murdered by a current or former intimate partner or another family member, according to official statistics. last year.
Ticket sales amidst confusion Che Ancora Domani — with a surprisingly uplifting ending — soaring above the bubbling barbie In 2023, it will become the highest-grossing film in Italy and will be among the top 10 highest-grossing films in Italian history. Schools organized screenings where more than 56,000 students across 300 campuses watched the single event and were also given the opportunity to ask questions of the director after the screening. “This is a moment of fermentation,” Coltezzi says. “People are tired of hearing horror stories about women being murdered.”
Much has changed in Italy, particularly in the law, since the time of the film’s story, when fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s view that women’s main role was to bear children was widely shared.
In 1970, Italy legalized divorce, catching up with most countries in Western Europe in allowing women to escape unhappy or abusive marriages. In 1981, the country abolished the “honor crimes” provision in its penal code, giving lenient punishment to men who killed their unfaithful wives or other female relatives during “dishonorable relations” and allowing men to marry their victims. This would allow him to avoid criminal prosecution for rape. .
In 1996, Italy finally revised its fascist-era rape laws, which did not recognize women as victims but treated them as crimes against “public order and morals.”
But while the law has developed, many Italian feminists argue that men’s attitudes have not kept up.. “What hasn’t changed is the mentality. It’s a toxic and resistant mindset,” Cortelesi said. “Women are liberated, but of course there are men who don’t accept this.”
Author of this book, Alessia Dulbecco It’s always been done this way Regarding gender education, he said that Italian public attitudes are still “linked to the past”, when men were firmly in control, violence was socially acceptable and it was legal to put a feisty woman in their place. It was a means of “A lot of men think they’re losing their privilege,” Dulbecco says. “They are scared of these cultural changes.”
Women’s rights activists have called for compulsory emotional education in schools to counter regressive stereotypes and equip young people with values and skills for a more equal era. But Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government favors voluntary after-school programs instead.
At this point, Ancora Domani It is likely to remain a rallying point for Italy’s unfinished gender revolution.
“Women’s rights are not forever. We must always be vigilant and always on guard,” Cortelesi said. “My intention is for girls to leave the theater with a desire and a desire to be free.”
amy.kazmin@ft.com