25/02/2026 - Through sharp, self-deprecating humour and melancholic light-heartedness, newcomer Alberto Palmiero blends generational uncertainty and artistic experience

Hitting Italian cinemas on 26 February courtesy of Fandango, Tienimi presente - the first work by twenty-seven-year-old Aversa-born director Alberto Palmiero, who studied film direction at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia di Roma - begins with a pitch at Venice Production Bridge. The project in question is entitled Il supplente, and producer Gianluca Arcopinto – playing himself in the present film – approaches Alberto enthusiastically after his presentation, telling him: "I thought your project was really interesting". Unfortunately, not even a minute later, he’s saying the exact same thing to another participant, and he doesn’t do a thing with Il supplente. It’s the first, perfect gag in a film which draws its humour from the space dividing aspiration and reality.

There’s nothing new about the subject matter. Nanni Moretti previously explored it in Sweet Dreams [+see also:
trailer
film profile], as did Fellini even earlier in Federico Fellini’s 8½. But Alberto isn’t a master in crisis: he’s a newcomer who can’t even get off the ground. His uncertainty is more generational than individual, and, if anything, this brings him closer to the New Wave directors, ranging from Truffaut to Godard, who used cameras to better understand themselves and their relationship with film. Yet Alberto doesn’t give up; he even applies to appear in the series Portobello – The Fall of Enzo Tortora [+see also:
series review
trailer
interview: Marco Bellocchio
series profile], directed by Marco Bellocchio, who plays himself and also co-produces the film together with Arcopinto.

Seven months later, Alberto is back in Aversa, in Campania, where his hometown treats him to minor indignities: at Easter, he’s sat on a nursery school chair at the children’s table, while his cousin who’s emigrated to Switzerland is earning five thousand francs a month. "You’re wallowing in sadness", someone tells him. He doesn’t deny it.

Palmiero shot his film with very few resources, casting friends and family as themselves – their acting being natural and instinctive – in a meta-cinematographic overlapping of fiction and reality whose modest production means – which elevate the film to auteur status - are reminiscent of other promising first works. The gag over the directors’ heights - “Sorrentino 180 cm, Garrone 179. But Scorsese is 163” - perfectly encapsulates the protagonist’s inferiority complex.

In Naples, while celebrating the Scudetto, he meets psychology student Gaia (Gaia Nugnes). Moments of romance – such as turtles laying eggs on the beach at Castel Volturno – underscore his attachment to his homeland but the impossibility of him staying there. One of his friends leaves for Milan as soon as he graduates from the Conservatorio to make sure he gets a job. Another, who’d previously helped him find work as an IT guy, now refuses to do so: not out of indifference but out of conviction, because Alberto should follow his dreams of becoming a director. "What’s important is that it makes you feel alive". His parents are apprehensive but understanding, his friends act as one another’s consciences, and the film has the delicacy not to judge them.

When Alberto tells Gaia "I’m scared of not living up to your expectations", he’s undeniably talking about her, but he’s also referring to the world of film and to himself. And when, at the dog shelter, he chooses the ugliest dog of all, it feels like the act of a person who sees himself as an underdog but who knows exactly what he wants. Crowned Best First Film in Rome Film Fest, Tienimi presente boasts the perfect form for telling a story which seems self-centred, but which is actually sufficiently self-deprecating to never appear complacent, while speaking to a universal form of melancholy.

Tienimi presente was produced by Kavac Film in collaboration with RAI Cinema.

(Translated from Italian)