Emma Dante's 'Misericordia' premieres at Rome Film Fest

Emma Dante returns to cinema with 'Misericordia', an adaptation of her stage play that has been in high demand since 2020. The film premiered at the 18th Rome Film Festival and will be released in Italian theaters on November 16 by Teodora Film. Set in a Sicilian fishing village of stone huts surrounded by waste and a majestic mountain, the story follows Arturo, a boy born from misery and violence, whose mother dies in childbirth. Three prostitutes—Betta, Nuccia, and young Anna—take care of him with desperate love. The film explores poverty, illiteracy, provincialism, violence against women, and disability. Dante describes it as a story where love passes through desperation and freedom through prison. Unlike the theatrical version, the film is set in open nature, and the protagonist Arturo, who in the play resembled Pinocchio, is now a disabled boy fighting for survival, an homage to Elsa Morante's 'L'isola di Arturo'.