Weekend films

'Gioia mia', surprising Italian debut

In cinemas, Margherita Spampinato's debut feature and 'The Shadow of the Raven' starring Benedict Cumberbatch

by Andrea Chimento

12 December 2025

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

One can only call the film 'Gioia mia', Margherita Spampinato's debut feature and one of the most successful debuts of this entire year, a real surprise.

Presented in the Cineasti del Presente competition at the last Locarno Film Festival, the film tells the story of Nico, an eleven-year-old boy with a lively conversation and the habit of answering before thinking. Raised in a secular and modern family, he is immersed in a hyper-connected world of technology, speed and screens that are always on.

But that summer, unwillingly, he is forced to leave everything behind and go to Sicily, where an elderly, gruff and deeply religious aunt is waiting for him. She lives alone in an ancient palace, full of legends and superstitions. No wi-fi, no electrical appliances and no escape route. At first it is open war, she greets him with annoyance and immediately tries to bend him to her rigid world of angels, rituals and silences. He reacts with rebellion, sarcasm and a thousand attempts to escape, if only mentally, from that place out of time.

There is a fairly obvious clash within 'Gioia mia', the one between modernity and tradition, the one between a young boy who is always online and an old lady who represents a world that seems to have vanished before our eyes.

At the same time, however, there is also a more symbolic battle to be fought within this relationship: that between reason and faith, between those who think they have all the answers at the click of a mouse and those who think that the world is still full of mysteries and must be traversed with the necessary slowness in order to understand it fully.

“Gioia mia” e gli altri film della settimana
Photogallery4 foto

Two solitudes

There are some redundancies in the screenplay and some passages that are less successful than others, but 'Gioia mia' quickly overcomes these minor flaws thanks to its incisive direction and a series of extremely well-written dialogues: however, it is above all the glances and small gestures that create a 'dialogue' between the two characters, a complicity that is gradually created through a bond that ends up changing both characters.

Spampinato recounts two lonelinesses who meet in a summer unlike the usual ones we are used to seeing on the big screen, and manages to make us fully empathise with both characters on stage, thanks to a double psychological introspection that is anything but easy to achieve.

One of the film's main assets is also Aurora Quattrocchi's splendid performance, deservedly awarded at Locarno. The actress of so many theatrical and cinematographic works (some will remember her in Mario Martone's 'Nostalgia') gives here one of the most convincing performances of her career and contributes to the overall success of the film.

The Shadow of the Raven

Another debut is 'The Shadow of the Raven', a film by Dylan Southern starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

The English actor plays a man who, after the sudden death of his wife, in grief and despair, gradually loses touch with reality.

As he tries to maintain a normal life for his two young children, a mysterious and seemingly malign presence begins to haunt him from the darkest corners of his flat. This creature, which comes to life from the illustrations the man makes for work, becomes more and more concrete and intrusive, turning their lives into a nightmare.

Based on Max Porter's novel 'Grief is a Feathered Thing', this film explores in a truly ambitious and courageous way a sensitive topic such as grieving.

The proposed symbolism is at times excessive and there are a few narrative lapses, but the operation nevertheless remains fascinating throughout and one does not feel at all that there is a first-time director behind the camera.

Southern delves into the abysses of the human soul, plays fearlessly with genre cinema and directs some visually striking sequences: there is no shortage of imperfections, but it is a film to be saved and seen, thanks in part to the powerful performance of its talented lead actor.