As reported on the data aggregator website FlixPatrol, Tearsmith by Alessandro Genovesi is currently the most watched movie in the world on Netflix, ranking first in the general top ten (as opposed to the top ten “non-English language films”). Produced by Colorado Film with a reported budget of 6,575,585 euros (according to the Italian Ministry of Culture’s Film and Audiovisual Department), the movie had been eagerly awaited by Generation Z audiences who subsequently sealed its success throughout the world from the day it first dropped on the US platform, on 4 April.

It had already proved triumphant on paper, given the enormous, unexpected success of the book of the same name upon which the film is based, penned under the pseudonym of Erin Doom by a young Italian writer who self-published the book in 2020 whereby it immediately entered the rankings on Amazon. The following year, the publishing house Magazzini Salani acquired the rights to re-publish it, and in 2022 it proved one of the most bestselling books in Italy with 450,000 copies sold. The film’s screenplay, which was based on the teen romance, was written by the director himself, together with Eleonora Fiorini, who has authored a dozen of titles, including films (The Physics of Water [+lire aussi :
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Most of The Tearsmith’s cast is composed of incredibly young actors, some of whom starring in their first feature film role, shored up by more seasoned actors such as Caterina Ferioli, Simone Baldasseroni, Alessandro Bedetti, Nicky Passarella, Roberta Rovelli, Orlando Cinque, Sabrina Paravicini, Eco Andriolo and Sveva Romana Candelletta. The film follows Nica, a seventeen year old girl who lives in a children’s home where a legend circulates of a mysterious artisan - the titular tearsmith - who’s responsible for all the fears and anxieties inhabiting the hearts of men. Nica is adopted by the Milligan family, along with another member of the children’s home, a troubled and mysterious young man called Rigel. Together, they try to overcome the painful and deprived past which unites them and to embrace “that desperate force called love which draws them to one another”.