28/03/2025 - Ivano De Matteo homes in once again on extreme family situations, this time asking what we’d do if our child committed a crime, and focusing on the road to making amends

Stefano Accorsi and Ginevra Francesconi in Una figlia

This isn’t the first time Ivano De Matteo has wondered or asked us what we’d do if our child were to commit a crime. The Dinner [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ivano De Matteo
film profile], released a little over ten years ago, explored that very topic. But whilst on paper the Roman director’s new film might give us a (fearful) sense of déjà vu, the subject-matter is so complex and lends itself to being explored in so many different ways, that all that’s needed to find new fuel for thought is to change the viewpoint in question. In Una figlia, his eighth fiction feature film presented in a premiere in the 16th Bif&st’s Rosso di Sera section, an adolescent commits a terrible act from which there’s no going back. It’s an impulsive gesture, a momentary mistake which has the power to change her life and the lives of those around her forever. How do you move on from and make amends for a tragedy of this kind? How can a father, with all the love and understanding in the world, continue to look his daughter in the eye and not see a monster?

Loosely based on Ciro Noja’s novel Qualunque cosa accada, Una figlia opens onto the day-to-day lives of widower father Pietro (Stefano Accorsi), his daughter Sofia (Ginevra Francesconi), who suffers from nightmares, and his new partner Chiara (Thony), who recently moved in with them. The latter tries her hardest to curry favour with teenager Sofia: she insists they spend time together and she continually calls her “love”, but ultimately the adolescent can’t stand her and is convinced that Chiara is a manipulator who has an ulterior motive for infiltrating their lives. Pietro tries as best he can to smooth things over, but one night, when he returns home from work, the unthinkable has happened. Pietro is stunned. Sofia has confessed. She’s taken into juvenile detention, while he sinks into an abyss of contrasting emotions which lead to him disowning a daughter who no longer feels like his for a long time.

Life in prison, desperation, bullying… Sofia experiences all of this as if paralysed by pain over what she’s done, fully aware that her father has every reason to refuse to visit her. The audience enters into prison with her and follows the dynamics at play; viewers listen to the relentless sound of cell bars being hit, doors closing with double deadlocks. Twenty-one-year-old Ginevra Francesconi (previously admired in Regina [+see also:
film review
interview: Alessandro Grande
film profile], among other works) carries almost all of the film’s heft on her young shoulders, taking a precise and natural approach to depicting the various phases and states of mind involved in making amends and rebuilding herself when the outcome is by no means a given. “Sooner or later, a child has to stop being a child, but a parent can’t stop being a parent, no matter what happens”, Accorsi insists. And in this film which sees De Matteo confirming his commitment to shake up audiences and to tell stories we’d rather not hear, with the help of his faithful co-screenwriter Valentina Furlan, it’s the daughter who makes the hardest but most vital decision. The cast also stars Michela Cescon in the part of Sofia’s empathic lawyer.

Una figlia was produced by Rodeo Drive with RAI Cinema. Following its premiere in Bif&st, where De Matteo presented his previous work, Mia [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], two years ago, the film will be released in Italian cinemas on 24 April via 01 Distribution.

(Translated from Italian)