27/06/2025 - The new film by the director of Margins, Audience Award winner in Venice’s Critics’ Week, features animation by Zerocalcare and a twelve-year-old with a wild imagination

(© 2022 Fabrizio de Gennaro per Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it)

Niccolò Falsetti is stepping behind the cameras once again, three years on from his successful first work Margins [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Niccolò Falsetti
film profile], which scooped the Audience Award in Venice’s International Critics’ Week in 2022, as well as being nominated for two David di Donatello prizes and three Nastri d’Argento trophies. His latest movie, Caro mondo crudele, sees Falsetti and screenwriter Francesco Turbanti (who also toplined Margins) returning to “their” Tuscan region of Maremma (specifically Albinia, Orbetello, Grosseto, Roccastrada and Gavorrano) to tell a story set in the late Nineties. The film follows Giovanna, a twelve-year-old with a wild imagination, who will stop at nothing to find her best (and only) friend, Mirko, who vanished into thin air from one day to the next, leaving her alone. Determined to unearth the truth, between distant adults and new and unexpected friendships, Giovanna will be forced to face up to reality and step her first steps in this “caro mondo crudele” ["dear cruel world"].

The very young actresses Aurora Malianni and Tara Trocchia are lead the casting, alongside Francesco Turbanti and Petra Valentini. Caro Mondo Crudele was written by Niccolò Falsetti in league with Francesco Turbanti, Giovanna Vicari and Tommaso Renzoni. Cinematography comes courtesy of Alessandro Veridiani, set design is by Vito Giuseppe Zito and costumes by Ginevra De Carolis, while the film’s original music will be composed by Giancane. Following the live action scenes which were shot in Tuscany, work will continue in Apulia where the animated sequences are already being made in the unmistakeable style of Zerocalcare, who designed the film’s characters. These sequences will lend form to Giovanna’s imagination.

Caro mondo crudele is being produced by Alessandro Amato and Luigi Chimenti for dispàrte, Antonio Manetti, Marco Manetti and Pier Giorgio Bellocchio for Mompracem and Domenico Procacci for Fandango in league with RAI Cinema, in collaboration with Movimenti Production and with support from the Italian Ministry for Culture’s Film Division and the Apulia Film Commission. The film will be released in Italian cinemas by Fandango Distribuzione, with world sales entrusted to Fandango Sales.

(Translated from Italian)