Edward Marchesi Paolo Strippoli 's new work, The Stranger, has been chosen to represent Italy in the Oscar race for Best International Feature Film . Presented at the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival, the film has attracted international attention, demonstrating that Italian genre cinema can achieve the highest levels of recognition.
Production, awards and placement in the film season
Made after The Valley of Smiles (2025) and It's Raining (2022), The Stranger marks the conclusion of what the director himself calls the "rain trilogy." The project was co-produced by Italian and European studios, with a budget that allowed for the use of real locations in 90s Puglia and a soundtrack composed by emerging bands.
Thanks to its participation in Venice, it entered the list of five Italian films nominated for the Oscars, a rare achievement for a psychological thriller.
The cast and key characters
Jasmine Trinca gives an intense performance as matriarch Anna Colonna, while Adriano Giannini plays her husband Walter, the manager of a fashion boutique.
The true supernatural centerpiece is Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, who plays the Stranger, a Luciferian woman who proposes a life exchange. Supporting her is the young Romana Maggiora Vergano, who plays her daughter Alice, whose life is at the center of the pact.
Plot and narrative mechanisms: the pact with the Stranger
The action takes place in Bari in the 90s, where the Colonna family seems to have achieved economic and social stability. During a party in a newly purchased villa, the youngest daughter suffers a serious accident. In the hospital wing, Anna encounters a mysterious presence who promises her salvation at the cost of her life. From that moment, the story unfolds into four chapters, each dedicated to a member of the family, creating a spiral structure that reflects the inevitable descent into chaos.
The theme of motherhood and control
The film uses the pact as a metaphor for a mother's desire to protect at all costs. The mother, driven by a deep fear of losing control, finds herself manipulating her children's lives, generating tension that turns into psychological horror . The director inserts references to classics such as Goethe's Faust and scenes from The Killing of a Sacred Deer but adapts them in a contemporary key, making the narrative both familiar and original.
Visual style, atmosphere and soundtrack
Visually, The Stranger combines the sterile white of the rooms of an Apulian villa with the warm Mediterranean sun, creating a contrast that accentuates the sense of alienation . The set design is deliberately stereotypical, but the choice to frame the party against a soundtrack that includes Liquido's "Narcotic" and Baustelle's "Nessuno" makes the scenes unforgettable. A nighttime sequence, in which the mother witnesses a binge-eating party, recalls the atmosphere of body horror without slipping into that genre.
Performances and acting strengths
Valeria Bruni Tedeschi embodies the Stranger with a perverse sweetness, capable of drawing the viewer into an almost religious pact. Her presence is key to maintaining the tension until the epilogue, where truths overlap and the mother-daughter relationship breaks down in an almost apocalyptic manner. While some actors don't quite reach the perfection of Giannini and Bruni, the complex interweaving of characters makes the film magnetic and rich in nuance.
Young audiences will find plenty to discuss, while critics' praise focuses on the film's mature direction and its genre-based approach , which speaks to the heart of contemporary Italian society.