VENICE - The city of Trieste provides the backdrop to a coming-of-age story that interweaves personal memory, reflections on identity, and a look at the recent past that reveals signs of generational change. “Un Anno di Scuola”, second film from Laura Samani, in competition in Orizzonti, is rooted in her personal life and loosely based on Giani Stuparich's book of the same name, first published in 1929. The book is set at Trieste's Liceo Dante, which Samani attended in the early 2000s. "I read it for the first time at these very desks," she says, "when I was the protagonists' age."
The reading of her youth became inspiration years later, almost by chance. During the first lockdown, at her parents' house, she rediscovered her high school books and decided to reread the novel. “It got caught somewhere. We hadn't even finished shooting Small Body before I knew I wanted to make another film.” The connection with Small Body doesn't end there. Samani explains that the new film also stems from a need for levity after the intense and painful experience of her debut: “After Small Body, which was a very important film for me but very painful to make, I needed levity. The best way was to work with adolescents: young men and a young woman, with whom I could also have fun, questioning issues that hadn't been answered in the previous film together.”
The director explains the choice of time setting: 2007, the year she turned 19. “At first, it was almost selfish: for me, being nineteen meant being nineteen in 2007. Then, with the screenwriter, we realized it was also a special moment in time: the last year before social media arrived in Italy and, for Trieste, the year of Slovenia's entry into Schengen. It was a border city becoming a city of cross-border commuters. There were bright dreams of Europe, perhaps a little different from those of today.”
The film was shot primarily at the I.S.I.S. Nautico “Tomaso di Savoia Duca di Genova – L. Galvani” school in Trieste and other locations in the city, and in Muggia. With regards to the visual tone, Samani cites two main references: “A German photographer I love very much, Josh Kern, who kept me company while I was writing, and a French film, Les Périphériques.”
The locations played a key role: "It's a film set in 2007, so it's almost a period film. Since then, many buildings in Trieste have been renovated, given new facades and bright colours and we risked running out of suitable locations. We avoided overly modernized settings." Among the most cherished locations, Samani points out ??Conconello: "It's the site of Antero and Fred's first date. And of my first date with my husband."
The film recounts the arrival of Fred, an eighteen-year-old Swedish girl, in an all-male class for the final year of high school. She captures everyone's attention, especially that of three friends: charming and reserved Antero; the histrionic seducer Pasini; and good-natured, sarcastic Mitis. Fred's arrival puts their friendship to the test. While each of the boys secretly desires her for himself, Fred longs to be admitted into the group, but she is continually asked to sacrifice something of herself to become one of them.
The film explores the challenges of growing up as a young woman in a male-dominated world, where body and desires can easily become weapons turned against you. “There is a deep and ingrained asymmetry in the way we perceive men and women. Male bodies—in their shape, gait, and clothing—convey power and ability, while female bodies communicate what can and cannot be done to them,” Laura Samani notes. “This perception often ends up becoming a social norm: men act, women simply appear.”
In Stuparich's novel, the character of the ‘other’ was an Austrian girl; Samani chose to transform her into Fred, a Swedish student: “It would not have been credible for a story set in 2007 to capture that dynamic. We decided to make the protagonist a foreigner, both for exotic allure— the arrival of a Swedish girl has a certain effect for teenagers—and for a simpler, more direct reason: language. Men and women don't speak the same language. We wanted to show how language could become a barrier, a weapon with power over others."
The scene in which Antero and Fred argue is emblematic: he speaks in Italian, she switches to English, until the roles are reversed with a cutting remark: "So let’s speak in Swedish. Why do I always have to get close to you, and you never get close to me?"
Produced by Nadia Trevisan and Alberto Fasulo for Nefertiti Film with Rai Cinema, and co-produced by Thomas Lambert for Tomsa Films with ARTE Cinema France, Un Anno di Scuola is distributed in Italy by Lucky Red.
The production received organizational support and funding from the Friuli Venezia Giulia Film Commission-PromoTurismoFVG and the support of Eurimages, MIC – Directorate General for Cinema and Audiovisual, the Friuli Venezia Giulia Audiovisual Fund, CNC, Île-de-France, and Creative Europe Media.