Cannes 2025 - Fuori by Mario Martone

Based on Goliarda Sapienza’s autobiographical account of her time in prison and her complex bond with a fellow inmate, both behind bars and beyond, Fuori has a soft, affecting touch that suits it perfectly. Rather than shaping Sapienza’s experience into a conventional story of incarceration or redemption, the film chooses something more elusive even if it means risking alienating some audiences that might expect a more conventional narrative.

The relationship at the film’s centre is not romanticised, nor is it framed as a neat "opposites attract". It is messy, asymmetrical, at times frustrating, and deeply human. The bond that forms between the two women exists in a special space: between care and dependence, admiration and projection, curiosity and anger at times. Fuori is also acutely sensitive to how such relationships shift once in the outside world. 

Valeria Golino is just fantastic as Sapienza, captivating and with its share of mystery, with the script and the actress finding just to right balance to keep us guessing about her inner turmoil at times but without ever being frustrating or uninvolving. She plays her with a constant, almost imperceptible tension between self-doubt and openness and with a genuine curiosity about others. The Italian actress understands that this is a woman who observes as much as she acts, who absorbs the world before deciding how to respond to it. Her performance is restrained and what makes Valeria Golino’s work here so compelling is her refusal to resolve Sapienza too easily.  This is a woman capable of warmth and distance, generosity and withdrawal, intellectual confidence and emotional fragility. The film trusts the audience to sit with these contradictions, to recognise them not as flaws in characterisation but as a lived experience. Opposite her, Matilda De Angelis brings a striking screen presence to the film, one that operates on a different level that complements Golino’s beautifully. De Angelis has both an emotional availability and a prickly distance that make her unpredictable and just as compelling.

Mario Martone's direction is unobtrusive without being bland, attentive without being precious. The tone is balanced with moments of levity alongside melancholy. The film does not its rush emotional beats and this patience allows the characters to breathe and to exist. There is also something quietly political about Fuori, though never confrontational.  In focusing on women whose lives do not easily conform to the usual narratives of success, rehabilitation, or moral clarity, the film resists easy categorisation. Yet it is within this ambiguity that the film finds its emotional truth. In the end, Fuori lingers not because it delivers grand statements, but because it captures something fragile: the way brief and unexpected encounters can leave lasting memories. 

Fuori might be a bit exposed in competition among some more heavy hitters but it is a wonderful and quietly affecting.

Review by Laurent de Alberti

Star rating: ★★★★☆

Official Selection, in Competion.

Fuori. Directed bt Mario Martone. Starring Valeria Golino, Matilda De Angelis...