March 1, 2025
Showtime: 4:00 pm
@ Peace Theater at Nazareth University Arts Center
Synopsis
A box office hit in Italy, this heartwarming dramatic comedy from Riccardo Milani (Like a Cat on a Highway) explores small town life and the power of education. After 40 years of teaching in the metropolitan jungle of Rome, primary school teacher Michele Cortese (Antonio Albanese) moves to an idyllic village in the heart of the Abruzzo National Park, to teach at a tiny school with only a handful of students aged seven to ten—a place where he can live a real life.
Michele struggles to overcome the challenges of small-town life to entertaining results. The school’s principal, Agnese (Virginia Raffaele) isn’t sure he’s up to the task. And the inadequacy of his clothing is enough to tip off all the locals. In short, Michele is a city boy with rustic fantasies. No one expects him to last long. But, he gradually adapts to the village of Lupe’s mountain ways, thanks to her and their spirited pupils.
He overcomes his metropolitan inadequacy and becomes one of them. However, when all seems well, unwelcome news arrives: the school has failed to meet its student enrollment quota for the next year and will be forced to close. The school must attract four additional students within two weeks. Closure of the school would lead to eventual abandonment of the village. And the principal of the next town’s school is doing all he can to ensure that Lupe’s school closes so that they can take the students. So begins a race against time to save the school, whatever it takes.
A World Apart touches on several pressures and anxieties arising from the threat of closure, but it more fundamentally concerns the shared humanity that teacher, principal, students and parents bring to their common problem; and the film’s more serious moments are beautifully balanced by its gently comedic ones. Such moments rely less on highlighting incompetence or inadequacy than on featuring surprising moral courage. The film brings the viewer to bask in the joy and wonders that may emerge from spirited cooperation to sidestep bureaucracy.
On a sidenote: the film’s child characters and most of its adult ones are played by first-time actors living within a couple of hours’ drive of the film’s location, Lupe — and they play their roles to perfection. This film is a treat for the whole family.
Excerpted with gratitude from BMA Mag
Released: 2024
Length: 1 hour, 53 minutes
Directed By: Riccardo Milani
Written By: Riccardo Milani
Starring- Antonio Albanese as Michele Cortese
- Virginia Raffaele as Agnese
- Alessandra Barbonetti as Maria Antonietta
- Corrado Oddi as Gaetano
- Sergio Saltarelli as Nunzio
- Elisa Di Eusanio as Gianna