There’s Still Tomorrow

There’s Still Tomorrow / C’è ancora domani
Paola Cortellesi, Italy, 2023, 118’

Tracing life in a working-class family, this is a tenderly ironic drama about the apparent role of a woman as a mere wife and mother but, in fact, a force for change.

Paola Cortellesi as the director and lead actress presents the everyday life of a Roman working-class family after World War II in great detail. Centered on the mother of the family, the film provides an insightful and innovative portrayal of life in poverty, domestic violence, women’s rights, and the mother’s determination to break the vicious cycle of normalizing abuse that percolates from generation to generation. The bittersweet drama filmed in a neorealist style but seasoned with a significant amount of humor and modernity lured Italians to the cinema once again!

“The balance between comedy and drama is my natural register. Ivano provides comedy because it’s important to understand that violent people like him and his father are stupid. You cannot identify with them. In order to present such a complex theme, you need to embrace complexity, which includes having comedic traits. /…/ The cinematic language ushers the audience in without being too harsh. Because I use comedic traits without it being a comedy in itself, people are lulled into the narrative. In that way, it’s possible to talk about something exceedingly serious without antagonising the audiences. /…/ It’s a very contemporary film set in the past. I wanted to examine what stayed the same, and what has changed. What’s changed for the better is that we have rights embedded in constitutions. What’s remained, unfortunately, is the toxic mentality that we still witness today. In Italy, there’s a femicide every 72 hours. And femicide is just the tip of the iceberg.” – Paola Cortellesi

In cooperation with the Italian Cultural Institute, Ljubljana.

Screened with: El Porton A Me Nona, Remigio Grižonič, Slovenija/Slovenia, 2019, 3’