Maura Delpero’s Venice Silver Lion Winner ‘Vermiglio’ Is Italy’s Oscar Candidate

Maura Delpero’s intimate epic “Vermiglio,” which recently won the Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize, has been designated as Italy’s candidate for the best international feature film category of the 2025 Academy Awards. 

The drama, which is set at the end of World War II in an Alpine village where the arrival of a soldier causes disruption in the dynamics between three sisters, had its North American premiere after Venice in the special presentations section at Toronto.

In her Variety review, critic Jessica Kiang called “Vermiglio” “quietly breathtaking,” going on to note that the film “unfolds from tiny tactile details of furnishings and fabrics and the hide of a dairy cow, into a momentous vision of everyday rural existence in the high Italian Alps.” 

“Vermiglio” marks Delpero’s follow-up to her first feature “Maternal” that takes place in an Argentinian refuge for teenage mothers run by nuns and made a splash on the festival circuit, will be released in the U.S. by Sideshow and Janus Films.

The “Vermiglio” producers are Francesca Andreoli, Leonardo Guerra Seràgnoli, Delpero and Santiago Fondevila Sancet. The film is co-produced by Carole Baraton, Pauline Boucheny Pinon, Jacques-Henry Bronckart and Tatiana Kozar. “Vermiglio” is a co-production between Cinedora and RAI Cinema and is also co-produced by Charades Production and Versus Production, with the participation of Anonymous Content.

“Vermiglio” was chosen to represent Italy in the Oscars race by a commission of experts named by Italy’s motion picture association ANICA that in a statement praised the film “for its ability to narrate the Italy of it rural past, the feelings of which are made [both] universal and actual,” according to a statement.

Their choice is somewhat surprising given that Paolo Sorrentino’s “Parthenope” his decades-spanning drama about a young woman born in Naples, was considered the frontrunner.

Sorrentino is a former international Oscar-winner with “The Great Beauty,” which won the statuette in 2014.