Una Figlia
Ivano De Matteo
Drama • 2025 • 1h 43m
Pietro, a middle-aged widower, lives in Rome with his daughter Sofia, with whom he shares a deeply emotional bond. After years of mourning, he has never sought another relationship. When he meets Chiara and decides to start a relationship with her, his daughter’s hostile reaction threatens their entire dynamic.
Impulsiveness is the price of growth: but without guidance, it becomes a wound.
(Daniel J. Siegel)
It is not uncommon for cinema to question what the human soul would avoid at all costs: the moral disorder that erupts where unconditional love should reign. What happens when the blood of our blood becomes the bearer of an irreparable shadow? This question, weighted like a verdict, hovers over Ivano De Matteo’s latest work, which once again forces the viewer to linger in the darkest zone of the parental bond.
Loosely inspired by a text by Ciro Noja, the film unfolds in a daily life undermined by fragile balances: a widowed father, Pietro, drowns in the attempt to rebuild meaning. Alongside him, a partner who wishes to be a new breath of life, and a daughter who perceives her as an intrusion. But the already illusory tranquility is shattered by an unexpected event. From that moment on, justice takes the shape of a juvenile detention center, while fatherhood transforms into an abandonment filled with bewilderment and pain.
Imprisonment, far from being merely physical space, becomes the landscape of chaos. The silence of the walls, the clang of the locks, the initial distrust in relationships: all contribute to creating a penitential ritual that does not redeem but forces one to look inward. It is here that the film surprises: while the police figures appear brutal, harsh, and punitive, it is the penitentiary institution – paradoxically – that offers a first hint of rehabilitation, a flicker of humanity through some educational figures.
The opening scene is revelatory, more than introductory: it clearly marks the weight of educational responsibilities, which are never absolute but also never secondary. With children, nothing can be left to chance: every gesture, every word has weight, a perception, an echo. In this fragile age, the gesture often precedes the thought. Action comes before evaluation, overwhelmed by an emotional illiteracy that is not blame, but a condition. The adolescent mind, still lacking a fully developed prefrontal cortex, can become prey to impulses that are not yet decipherable. The consequences, then, can be definitive.
The film does not simply narrate: it digs, it peels, it exposes. A young girl, emblematic of unstable age, performs an act that breaks the ordinary flow of existence. And that gesture, disproportionate, perhaps even devoid of a real motive, seems to come from an inner world that the protagonist herself cannot name. A dark guest inhabits her soul, and the lack of cognitive and emotional tools makes her incapable of holding back the gesture, of processing the conflict.
Sofia, portrayed by a young actress with tragic grace, passes through the seasons of atonement like a changing skin. There are no certainties, no pre-packaged catharses. Only fragments, attempts at rebirth in a world that offers no footholds. And at the heart of it all, that phrase that echoes like a warning: “A child can stop being a child. A parent, on the other hand, can never cease to be one.” But the film – and the experience – also suggest something else: perhaps a parent may never truly become one, except biologically.
And it is in this vertigo, between role and function, between love and guilt, between justice and affection, that De Matteo’s work finds its most unsettling voice. No consolations, no alibis. Only the need to look love in the face when it confronts the unforgivable.
Loosely inspired by a text by Ciro Noja, the film unfolds in a daily life undermined by fragile balances: a widowed father, Pietro, drowns in the attempt to rebuild meaning. Alongside him, a partner who wishes to be a new breath of life, and a daughter who perceives her as an intrusion. But the already illusory tranquility is shattered by an unexpected event. From that moment on, justice takes the shape of a juvenile detention center, while fatherhood transforms into an abandonment filled with bewilderment and pain.
Imprisonment, far from being merely physical space, becomes the landscape of chaos. The silence of the walls, the clang of the locks, the initial distrust in relationships: all contribute to creating a penitential ritual that does not redeem but forces one to look inward. It is here that the film surprises: while the police figures appear brutal, harsh, and punitive, it is the penitentiary institution – paradoxically – that offers a first hint of rehabilitation, a flicker of humanity through some educational figures.
The opening scene is revelatory, more than introductory: it clearly marks the weight of educational responsibilities, which are never absolute but also never secondary. With children, nothing can be left to chance: every gesture, every word has weight, a perception, an echo. In this fragile age, the gesture often precedes the thought. Action comes before evaluation, overwhelmed by an emotional illiteracy that is not blame, but a condition. The adolescent mind, still lacking a fully developed prefrontal cortex, can become prey to impulses that are not yet decipherable. The consequences, then, can be definitive.
The film does not simply narrate: it digs, it peels, it exposes. A young girl, emblematic of unstable age, performs an act that breaks the ordinary flow of existence. And that gesture, disproportionate, perhaps even devoid of a real motive, seems to come from an inner world that the protagonist herself cannot name. A dark guest inhabits her soul, and the lack of cognitive and emotional tools makes her incapable of holding back the gesture, of processing the conflict.
Sofia, portrayed by a young actress with tragic grace, passes through the seasons of atonement like a changing skin. There are no certainties, no pre-packaged catharses. Only fragments, attempts at rebirth in a world that offers no footholds. And at the heart of it all, that phrase that echoes like a warning: “A child can stop being a child. A parent, on the other hand, can never cease to be one.” But the film – and the experience – also suggest something else: perhaps a parent may never truly become one, except biologically.
And it is in this vertigo, between role and function, between love and guilt, between justice and affection, that De Matteo’s work finds its most unsettling voice. No consolations, no alibis. Only the need to look love in the face when it confronts the unforgivable.
The problem with youth is that it has never been taken seriously.
(Janusz Korczak)
(Janusz Korczak)
