In the summer of 1975 in central Italy, a 13-year-old girl, suitcase in one hand and a bag of shoes in the other, knocks at the door of a farmstead. So begins the story of a teenager who lost everything.

Set within the awe-inspiring landscapes of Abruzzo in central Italy in the summer of 1975, A Girl Returned is an adaptation of the best-selling, award-winning novel by Donatella Di Pietrantonio. Director Giuseppe Bonito was awarded the 2022 David di Donatello Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. It is an evocative and thoughtful examination of childhood and the true meaning of family. It tells the story of a thirteen-year-old girl who is returned to her much humbler and less privileged biological family.

Suddenly her urbane middle-class life is turned upside down, surrounded by strangers and new rural customs that are entirely unfamiliar to her. She instantly gains a complete family of siblings. Still, her feelings of abandonment and the reluctant acceptance of her
siblings are in stark contrast to the true binds that tie families together.

A Girl Returned provides a metaphor for the divisions and contradictions between Italy’s rural
and urban worlds seen through the central Italian institution, family.
- Paolo Rotondo

SE/IT | 2021 | Drama | 110 min | Dir. Giuseppe Bonito | In Italian with English subtitles

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