Indie Filmmaker Scores Big at Venice Film Festival with Gender-Bending Drama

In the latest news from the 2022 Venice Film Festival, Italian director Laura Samani has scored a major victory with her new film "A Year of School." The drama, which will also be screening at the Busan International Film Festival, won best actor honors in the Horizons competition for newcomer Giacomo Covi.

"A Year of School" is a loose adaptation of a book set at the beginning of the 20th century, but Samani has updated the story to 2007. The film follows a Swedish young woman named Fred who, freshly arrived in Italy, is enrolled in an all-male senior year class of a technical high school in the northeastern city of Trieste. There, she quickly becomes the center of attention for three close male friends - the sensitive Antero, the popular yet fragile womanizer Pasini, and the protective Mitis. Each of the three secretly desires a romantic rapport with Fred, creating disruption and exploring themes of sexual desire and gender barriers.

Samani, who previously made a splash with her 2021 feminist magical realist fable "Small Body," says the new film is "about desire" and "how different [sexual desire] is according to what [type of body] you live in." The director, who drew inspiration from her own experiences as the only girl in a "gang" of three guys during her time at the same school, worked with a cast of mostly non-professional actors to bring this intriguing drama to life.