08/09/2026 - VENICE 2026: Edoardo Gabbriellini’s latest feature seeks to undermine the media sensationalisation of the true story of a young man murdered in 2016

Emanuele Maria Di Stefano (left) and Valerio Mastandrea in The City of the Living

There’s a harrowing, deeply resonant dramatic irony embedded in the latest effort by Edoardo Gabbriellini, which renarrativises the true story of Luca Varani (played here by Emanuele Maria Di Stefano), a 23-year-old killed by two men in their home in 2016. The tale shocked Italy for its apparent randomness and sheer brutality. But here, in The City of the Living, we already know what’s coming for Luca – somehow, even if one doesn’t know the story inside and out. We know that his fate is sealed in this film, even if branding it as inevitable does a disservice to his life.

This very uneasy tension is what fuels the psychological calm that underpins the movie, which Gabbriellini expertly steers away from true-crime story and moulds more into a melancholic ode to the terrifying unpredictability of life. The City of the Living had its world premiere in Venice’s Orizzonti section and will soon have its international bow in Toronto’s Centrepiece strand. The film was based on the 2020 novel of the same name by Nicola Lagioia, which reconstructs the young man’s life through interviews and testimonies.

Starting with his adoption by his parents (Simona Senzacqua and Valerio Mastandrea), Luca is seemingly ordained to be beloved by those around him, including his on-and-off again girlfriend Marta Gaia (Gaia Merlonghi). Yet, after he drops out of night school, having already flunked out of secondary school, he would rather spend his days gambling away his money at digital slot machines. Later, he meets Andreas (Andrea Isidori), who invites him into the world of so-called gay-for-pay escort and sex work with wealthy clients for a bit of cash – only to repeat the cycle all over again.

Luca’s anxious boredom is palpable, and his aimlessness is nearly all-consuming. He seems apathetic about the world – he skips work, he cancels on his girlfriend – but we can’t get into his head to see why. The filmmaker restrains from pushing the need to empathise with Luca’s plight on the viewer. Instead, through this choice of repetitive actions seemingly devoid of meaning, Gabbriellini is able to reflect the mystery of it all: that frustrating part of not being able to provide some sort of rational meaning behind his eventual murder.

The City of the Living thrives on a multi-dimensional feeling of discomfort, set against an extremely dark-paletted and dreary Rome. The identity of the murderers as queer men is made clear but never emphasised as a motive. Their twisted entitlement and drug use, rather, are the fuel. Likewise, there is no moment in which the film accuses Luca of having gone too far. When he goes over for the last time, it’s simply with a childlike earnestness and desire for money, like the rest of his encounters.

Gabbriellini never shows anything particularly lurid in motion, other than the distressing final moments before he is knocked out from a drugged drink at a private party. Much is implied through the juxtaposition of static – and even sterile – moments that act almost as snapshots of memories. He provides a conscious pushback on the desire to be saturated by terrible images, leaving us straining to capture some glimpse of the past through a careful examination of what stands in a single frame. The final 30 minutes are crafted as a sort of quiet denouement: we know what is to come after his body is found. Here, it’s less about discovery and more about reliving events – not to make sense of it all, but to calm our own desperate pursuit of meaning.

The City of the Living is an Italian production by Eagle Pictures, Cinema Unidici and Lungta Film. PiperPlay holds the rights to its world sales.