Espresso, Extravaganza, and Existential Crises: First Look at the 2025 ST. ALi Italian Film Festival.

The ST. ALi Italian Film Festival is back this September, once again proving that when it comes to cinema, the Italians do it like they do everything else - larger than life, a little messy, and always stylish enough to make the rest of us look underdressed. As the largest celebration of Italian culture and film outside Italy, the festival is as much about attitude as it is about art. And the first announced highlights suggest 2025 will be a year of sharp contrasts: from couture costume houses to awkward Tinder-adjacent first dates, from Sicilian paradoxes to pink trousers with a political punch.

The festival opens with Paolo Genovese’s record-breaking hit Somebody to Love (FolleMente) - because who better to kick things off than the man who gave the world Perfect Strangers, the film that spawned more remakes than your nonna’s lasagna recipe? His new romantic comedy drops us into a first date that is equal parts mortifying and magnetic, featuring Edoardo Leo, Pilar Fogliati and Vittoria Puccini. It’s Genovese doing what he does best: holding up a mirror to our private anxieties and asking us to laugh - because otherwise, we’d probably cry into our Aperol.

On a richer, more embroidered note comes Ferzan Özpetek’s Diamonds (Diamanti), a drama drenched in satin, family intrigue, and 1970s Roman decadence. With Luisa Ranieri and Jasmine Trinca as sisters running a couture costume design house, it’s a story that celebrates the artisans behind Italian cinema’s golden images - the seamstresses who stitched Sophia Loren into her gowns, the quiet hands that shaped cinematic glamour. Özpetek, known for his lush explorations of identity and intimacy, frames their work as both craft and metaphor: behind every dazzling image, there are women sewing furiously in the back room.

For those craving gravitas, Maura Delpero’s The Mountain Bride – Vermiglio (winner of Venice’s Grand Jury Prize) offers a haunting meditation on family and tradition during the dying embers of WWII. Delpero mined her own family’s past for this story of survival and moral choice, set against the Dolomites in all their misty, cinematic glory. It’s not just a film - it’s memory transfigured. Think Rossellini’s Rome, Open City filtered through 21st-century feminist sensibilities.

From there, the program jolts into the modern digital age with The Boy with Pink Trousers, a box office sensation that uses the true story of Italy’s first publicised case of online bullying to explore masculinity, vulnerability, and the dangers of a culture that weaponises difference. With rising star Samuele Carrino’s breakout performance, it promises to be both heart-wrenching and conversation-starting - the kind of film that lingers long after the credits roll.

Lest anyone accuse the Italians of being too serious, The Illusion (L’Abbaglio) brings comic relief via the bumbling brilliance of Ficarra & Picone and the incomparable Toni Servillo. Reimagining Giuseppe Garibaldi’s 1860 campaign - the very event that unified Italy - Roberto Andò’s film balances slapstick and sly political commentary. It’s the sort of historical revisionism where you’ll laugh at the absurdities, then sheepishly Google to see how much of it was true.

And yes, because no festival is complete without a dose of familial chaos, When Mum is Away… With the In-Laws continues the saga of the Rovelli family, this time letting the in-laws crash the party in Puglia. Directed by Alessandro Genovesi and starring Fabio De Luigi and Valentina Lodovini, it’s proof that Italian comedy thrives where Australians often falter: turning dysfunctional family holidays into box office dynamite.

These are only the opening notes of the aria - the full program lands in late August, promising even more variety: glossy comedies, brooding dramas, historical spectacles, and at least one film that will make you text an ex after two glasses of Nero d’Avola.

The 2025 festival opens 17 September in Adelaide and Canberra, before touring Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Byron Bay, Ballina, and Ballarat. Think of it as an Italian road trip without the bad car rental insurance.

Until then, get ready for espresso by day, cinema by night, existential crises in between. Because nobody does beauty, chaos, and humanity in quite the same intoxicating cocktail as the Italians.

For updates and tickets (on sale late August), visit italianfilmfestival.com.au.

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Words by AW.

Photos courtesy of MB Publicity.