Maura Delpero’s Secret to Casting the Women of ‘Vermiglio’: Find Actresses Who Love Chickens
Maura Delpero’s lushly told, moving mountainside World War II epic “Vermiglio” kept a low profile at the 2024 Venice Film Festival as one of a handful of Italian films in the competition. To some’s surprise — only because most eyes were on quote-unquote buzzier films like “The Brutalist” and “Babygirl” and “Queer” — this story of a repressed rural community upended by the arrival of a handsome stranger (Giuseppe De Domenico) won the Silver Lion prize, second only to the Golden Lion, from the jury led by Isabelle Huppert. Now, “Vermiglio” (December 25, Sideshow/Janus) represents Italy in the 2025 Best International Feature Film Oscar race — and should land a spot on next week’s shortlist after nods from the Gothams and Golden Globes.
“I was happy when they nominated the [Venice] jury because of Isabelle, but also because of the other members,” Delpero told IndieWire of the filmmaker-heavy jury that included James Gray, Agnieszka Holland, Andrew Haigh, Kleber Mendon?a Filho, and Abderrahmane Sissako. “I was very lucky because it was not, let’s say, a glamor jury. It was really a lot of people who work, who write, who direct, who really know how difficult some decisions are. I was really happy that they would watch the film, first of all, and of course, it was a beautiful recognition from [Isabelle Huppert], but also from the others.”
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High in the Italian Alps, the wise but taciturn eldest daughters of a provincial matriarch, perpetually pregnant, vie for the attentions of Pietro (De Domenico), who hails from Sicily and has been deserted by the war. To play the daughters, Delpero, in her second feature after “Maternal,” cast unknown actresses as recalcitrant Lucia (Martina Scrinzi) and Ada (Rachele Potrich) based on their unusual auditions. It was important to find actresses who could convey the movie’s central themes, including disenfranchisement from a community and disillusionment with its entrenched code of ethics, which can be sexist and encouraging of repression, leading to worse tragedies.
In the film, Lucia marries Pietro, only to face down the barrels of life’s disappointments, just like her parents, with newfound motherhood in tow. Ada, meanwhile, self-flagellates by lying down in the shit-filled chicken coop after each time she masturbates behind an armoire — or looks at pornography. Here, the women live off the land and toil endlessly in order to become wives and have children who will then have more children with the hopes of doing the same.
“Lucia — I mean Martina — wrote an email and sent a little video, and said, ‘OK, I live here in the mountains with the chickens, my brother is a woodcutter,’ and I was like, ‘Woo!’ It was important to have someone who had a relationship with nature, with beasts, who didn’t have a problem with dirtying her hands. What I loved in her was both her face, because it’s a face without time, and since the references I passed to the DOP were mainly paintings, I needed to have someone who could be a painting. And I think she could be a Vermeer, a Flemish painting. From the very first moment, she was an actress that could really listen to me. She was really willing to pass through a lot of things without being protected or looking at herself from outside.”
For the teenage Ada, meanwhile, Delpero found Potrich in a rural high school because she wanted a different kind of Gen Z actress.
“I found her in a rural high school where children who want to work in farms with animals go. It was one of the most difficult castings because it was girls, when they’re 14, 15, and they are really into TikTok,” the filmmaker said. “They’re really in another [world]. I was looking for such a different thing. Her interview was fantastic because I used to ask every girl, ‘What was your most happy moment in your life until now?’ And everyone was talking about, ‘Oh when I fall in love, when they wrote to me,’ blah blah blah, and she very seriously said, ‘When one of my chickens recognized me and ran toward me.’ I was like, ‘Wow, where does this girl come from?'”
The director added, “The second question was, ‘What was the saddest moment in your life?’ and she said, “When one of my chickens died.” And I said, ‘OK, I found her.'”
Delpero wrote the film with her father (himself from the Italian town Vermiglio) and grandmother (who gave birth to many children) and their large Italian family in mind, — even living in the same house and sleeping in the same bed where her grandmother grew up, during pre-production.
“When I began to write, I discovered that I had a lot of things inside me that I didn’t think about for many years. In a way, it was like taking a lid off a pot and all the steam comes out. I had this sensation it was there, and it was just covered by all your life and the other things you do, but there were so many memories I absorbed in my childhood, so many characters and temperaments and family histories I could refer to that it was nice to have them and not let them die. I wanted to make them live,” she said.
“Vermiglio” shot in the Trentino-Alto Adige region of Italy, ensconced among the Dolomites along the borders of Austria in Switzerland, on location. Russian cinematographer Mikhail Krichman conjures some of the most beautiful images of the year, the blue, snowy expanse of the mountains ever in the background of the women in pain and joy up close.
“We wanted true snow, so we were chasing the snow, which means, also, going higher up. We went to 2,000 meters, and it’s freezing, and it’s difficult to bring the crew with period costumes that are not technical costumes with skis. The animals, of course, it’s not a matter of period or contemporary,” Delpero said. “Beasts are beasts. The cow does whatever she wants. And the chicken, too, and the mule, too. You cannot direct them. You cannot direct babies. It’s difficult to direct children. There are scenes in which I had to direct chicken and cows and children altogether. It was a tough production, but we were talking about a tough world. We didn’t have any choice. You wouldn’t have done this film in a studio.”
Delpero herself was born in Northern Italy, where “Vermiglio” is set, but splits her time between Argentina, where she says the industry has been more eager to support women directors. “Vermiglio” is the first movie directed by a woman to represent Italy at the Oscars since Cristina Comencini 20 years ago with “Don’t Tell.”
“I began with documentaries 20 years ago, and when I began, there [were no women directors]. It was a desert. I live between Italy and Argentina, so I have two industries in my mind,” she said. “In the last years, Argentina did a lot of work with this, and Italy is very slow. Very slow. It’s changing a little bit. A couple of days ago, I had a beautiful talk with Alice Rohrwacher. It’s nice because you begin to feel there is less disequilibrium. At the beginning, it was really, like, ‘Why? Isn’t this a male job?’ No, it’s a job for everyone.”
Watch that Alice Rohrwacher-hosted Q&A in the video below.
“Vermiglio” is Italy’s submission for the Best International Feature Film Oscar. It opens December 25 from Sideshow/Janus.
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