FUORI – REVIEW – Italian Film Festival, 2025 **1/2

FILM 

Directed by Mario Martone

At Italian Film Festival 2025, Palace Cinemas, 19 Sept to 16 Oct 2025

2025, 115 min, Drama, Biography, Italian with English subtitles 

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Star Rating: ★★½ (2.5/5)

This film review is published only on this blog.

 L-R: Matilda De Angelis & Valeria Golino

Fuori, a 2025 biographical drama directed and co-written by Mario Martone, revisits Rome in 1980 through the lens of Goliarda Sapienza’s semi-autobiographical 1983 novel L’università di Rebibbia. This adaptation casts Valeria Golino as Sapienza, with Matilda De Angelis as Roberta and Elodie as Barbara, in a story that intertwines personal struggle, feminist awakening, and the claustrophobic atmosphere of Italy in the wake of political unrest.

 

The film unfolds largely within the oppressive walls of Rebibbia prison, where Sapienza serves five days, and expands to the wider cityscape of Rome, its streets teeming with social tension and cultural change. Through her encounters with fellow inmates and outsiders alike, Sapienza’s inner conflicts — her political ideals, her need for creative freedom, and her fraught relationships — are brought to the surface.

 

While the film is ambitious, it stumbles narratively. Despite Golino’s nuanced performance as Sapienza, the script leaves her inner life curiously underdeveloped. Roberta and Barbara feel more like fragments of Sapienza’s psyche than fully realised characters. The political and feminist dimensions, so integral to Sapienza’s real story, appear in flashes but lack sustained dramatic weight. Instead, Martone leans heavily on atmosphere — extended silences, moody compositions, and abstract symbolism — which, while occasionally striking, too often stall the momentum.

 

Visually, Martone and his team render 1980 Rome with sombre authenticity. The cinematography lingers on stark prison interiors, dilapidated suburban districts, and the muted light of an unsettled city. The soundtrack, blending period pop with stark silences, underscores the disorientation of confinement and the yearning for freedom. These elements succeed in anchoring the film in its time and place, immersing the viewer in an Italy still wrestling with turbulence.

 

There are moments of resonance: a hushed exchange between Sapienza and Roberta beneath the watchful gaze of prison guards, or Barbara’s wordless breakdown in a stark communal cell. These scenes hint at the film’s potential for raw emotional impact. But overall, Fuori feels diffuse, more concerned with evoking Sapienza’s milieu than fully embodying her voice.

 

As a cinematic portrait, Fuori is admirable in scope but uneven in execution. It may satisfy viewers drawn to Martone’s painterly aesthetic and to Golino’s gravitas, but it struggles to translate the urgency and vitality of Sapienza’s novel to the screen.

 

By Kate Herbert

 

 

Cast

•       Valeria Golino – Goliarda Sapienza

•       Matilda De Angelis – Roberta

•       Elodie – Barbara

Creative Team

•       Director: Mario Martone

•       Screenplay: Mario Martone

•       Based on: L’università di Rebibbia (1983) by Goliarda Sapienza