Serpenti at Venice Film Festival: A Kafkaesque Take on Feminicide

At the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, Roberto De Paolis Maino presented his new film 'Serpenti', co-written with the D'Innocenzo brothers. The film stars Leonardo Lidi as Paolo Marra, a man who confesses to the murder of his wife, only to face a surreal bureaucratic maze where no one seems willing to condemn him. Set almost entirely in a police station over the course of a day, the narrative follows Marra's attempts to surrender and atone, but he is thwarted by a series of grotesque characters, including a dismissive policeman played by Alessandro Borghi and a defense attorney portrayed by Pietro Castellitto, who absurdly argues for his innocence. Valeria Golino appears as a fortune teller who delivers a philosophical monologue on guilt, concluding that a feminicide counts for nothing. The film is described as a grotesque metaphor for societal indifference to gender-based violence, with the victim remaining an absent figure. The screenplay deliberately avoids linearity, accumulating deviations and shifts in meaning, transforming characters into conceptual figures within a broader philosophical and social interrogation. The production design by Elisabetta Zanini emphasizes the importance of place, with scenes in a police station and a suburban bar. The film premiered at the Venice festival, and the article was written by Barbara Frigerio.