Un anno di scuola (2025) by Laura Samani
IT/FR | 2025 | 102 min | Coming-of-Age Drama
➡️ Where to Watch: IT
She Wants to Become One of Them — Until Belonging Starts Requiring Her to Become Less of Herself
September 2007. Fred moves from Sweden to Trieste with her father and enters the final year of a technical high school, where she discovers she is the only girl in an otherwise all-male class. She quickly gravitates toward Antero, Pasini and Mitis, three boys whose friendship has existed for years, and her arrival disrupts the equilibrium between them.
Laura Samani turns this familiar coming-of-age setup into something more complicated than a teenage romantic rivalry. Fred wants to belong to the boys' world rather than merely attract their attention, but acceptance becomes increasingly conditional: the closer she gets to becoming part of the group, the more she is asked to sacrifice pieces of herself.
➡️ Movie Insight: Fred wants friendship, acceptance and the freedom to define herself inside a world built by boys. Belonging initially appears liberating but gradually becomes another form of pressure. Growing up means discovering that acceptance is not worth every compromise.
Why This Movie Matters Right Now: Fitting In Can Be Harder When Everyone Says Individuality Matters
Young people grow up surrounded by contradictory expectations. They are encouraged to express individuality while simultaneously navigating peer groups, social codes and gender expectations that reward conformity. Un anno di scuola captures that tension through Fred, whose confidence does not protect her from the compromises demanded by belonging.
Samani places the story in 2007, before today's social-media culture fully transformed adolescence, yet its central conflict feels contemporary. The need to be accepted by a group can still collide with the need to protect an individual identity, making Fred's school year a broader story about the boundaries between adaptation and self-erasure.
➡️ Why It Matters: Belonging remains one of the strongest forces shaping adolescence. The difficult question is how much someone should change to achieve it. Fred's experience makes acceptance meaningful precisely because it comes with a price.
Should You Watch It?: A Coming-of-Age Story Where Friendship Matters More Than the Love Triangle
The setup could easily become a conventional story about one girl attracting three boys. Instead, the more interesting relationship is between Fred and the group itself: she wants entry into a friendship that existed before her, while her presence changes the dynamics that made that friendship possible.
That makes the film especially suited to viewers interested in character-driven European coming-of-age cinema. Its focus extends beyond first attraction toward friendship, gender, group identity and the compromises young people make while discovering where they belong.
➡️ Viewing Recommendation: Watch it for the tension between fitting in and remaining yourself. The teenage attraction gives the story momentum, but friendship and identity provide its deeper conflict. It turns one school year into a test of what belonging should actually require.
Why Everyone Is Talking About It: Venice Turned a Young Ensemble Into One of the Film's Biggest Stories
Un anno di scuola premiered in the Orizzonti competition at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, where Laura Samani competed for Best Film. The festival became particularly important for its young cast: Giacomo Covi won the Orizzonti Award for Best Actor, while Covi, Pietro Giustolisi and Samuel Volturno collectively received the NuovoImaie Talent Award for emerging performers.
Samani also received the Authors Under 40 Award for Best Director and the Magic Lantern Award at Venice. The film subsequently earned a Golden Eye nomination at Zurich, a Golden Giraldillo nomination at Seville, a 2026 Silver Ribbon nomination for casting director Davide Zurolo and second place in Cannes Écrans Juniors.
➡️ Viral Potential: The film's discovery story extends beyond the screen to a young cast receiving immediate festival recognition. Venice transformed its emerging performers into part of the conversation surrounding the movie. That combination of fresh faces, awards and an accessible coming-of-age premise gives the film appeal beyond specialist festival audiences.
Why Un anno di scuola Stands Out: The Girl Does Not Simply Enter the Boys' World — She Wants to Belong to It
Fred's position is more complicated than being the outsider who disrupts a male group. She actively wants inclusion. That distinction matters because it shifts the story from a simple critique of exclusion toward the more uncomfortable compromises people sometimes make voluntarily when acceptance becomes important enough.
Samani also reverses the historical perspective of Giani Stuparich's source material. The film is freely adapted from his Un anno di scuola but relocates the story to Trieste in 2007, allowing questions of gender, friendship and adolescent identity to operate within a recognizably contemporary youth culture.
➡️ Cinema Insight: Fred is neither simply excluded nor comfortably accepted. She occupies the more complicated territory where belonging is possible, but only under conditions. The film becomes distinctive by asking when adaptation stops being connection and starts becoming self-sacrifice.
Movie Trend: Coming-of-Age Drama — When a Girl Trying to Fit Into a Male Friend Group Risks Losing Herself
Coming-of-age cinema frequently treats belonging as a milestone: find the right friends, discover a community and establish an identity. A more complicated version of that story asks whether the group offering acceptance also expects the individual to change in order to deserve it.
Fred enters exactly that situation. Antero, Pasini and Mitis already possess a shared history and established dynamic; becoming part of their circle means entering a structure she did not create. As attraction destabilizes the friendship, Fred's desire to belong increasingly conflicts with her ability to remain entirely herself.
Trend Formula:new environment → outsider seeks acceptance → friendship develops → attraction destabilizes the group → belonging becomes conditional → individuality is compromised → self-recognition → growing up requires choosing what not to sacrifice
➡️ Movie Trend: Coming-of-age stories are becoming more interested in the cost of acceptance rather than treating belonging as an automatic victory. Finding a group can solve loneliness while creating new pressure to conform. Un anno di scuola turns that contradiction into Fred's defining adolescent lesson.
Broad Trend: Belonging Without Losing Yourself — When Audiences Connect With People Trying to Fit In Without Giving Up Who They Are
Belonging is a fundamental social need, but contemporary culture increasingly celebrates individuality at the same time. That creates a recognizable tension: people want communities, friendships and relationships where they feel accepted, yet they also want that acceptance without having to suppress the characteristics that make them different.
Fred embodies that contradiction. She does not reject the group or position independence as the only desirable outcome; she genuinely wants connection with Antero, Pasini and Mitis. The problem emerges when connection begins demanding progressively greater sacrifice.
Broad Trend Formula:desire to belong → pressure to adapt → acceptance becomes conditional → individuality is compromised → self-recognition → choosing authenticity → belonging without losing yourself
➡️ Broad Trend: Audiences recognize the desire to be accepted without becoming someone else to earn that acceptance. The tension becomes strongest when belonging feels valuable enough to make compromise tempting. These stories remind viewers that the healthiest communities make space for individuality rather than eliminating it.
Why Belonging Without Losing Yourself Stories Are Popular: Acceptance Is Powerful Because Rejection Still Hurts
Belonging stories remain compelling because almost everyone understands the pressure to adjust behavior, appearance or personality in order to fit into a group. Coming-of-age cinema intensifies that experience by placing it during the period when identity is still forming, making every friendship potentially influential in deciding who a young person believes they should become.
➡️ Audience Motivation: Viewers recognize both the comfort of belonging and the danger of needing it too much. These stories allow them to revisit moments when acceptance competed with individuality. The satisfaction comes from seeing characters discover that connection should not require self-erasure.
Viewer Profile: Life Reflectors - Viewers Choosing Coming-of-Age Stories That Make Them Reconsider Identity, Friendship and Belonging
Life Reflectors gravitate toward films that use specific stages of life to illuminate experiences that remain recognizable long afterward. Adolescence is especially powerful for this audience because school, friendship, first attraction and social acceptance can expose the moments when identity begins taking shape.
Un anno di scuola fits this viewing behavior because Fred's experience is culturally and geographically specific while the central tension is universal. Viewers do not need to have been a Swedish girl in an all-male Italian classroom to recognize the desire to enter a group without disappearing inside it.
Audience Dimension | Profile |
Core Audience | Life Reflectors drawn to intimate stories about growing up, identity and changing friendships |
Age Group | Young adults and adult viewers |
Lifestyle | Culturally curious viewers interested in relationships, identity and formative life experiences |
Cinema Taste | Coming-of-age drama, European cinema, character-driven festival films and youth stories |
Streaming Behavior | Discovery through festivals, reviews, awards coverage and curated independent cinema platforms |
Discovery Mindset | Emerging filmmakers, new performers, festival recognition and relatable human stories |
➡️ Audience Insight: Life Reflectors watch coming-of-age cinema partly to understand experiences they have already lived through. Specific adolescent conflicts become mirrors for broader questions about identity and relationships. Fred's school year invites viewers to reconsider where belonging helped shape them—and where it may have required too much.
What This Movie Means for the Industry: Young Audiences Do Not Require Conventional Young-Adult Storytelling
Un anno di scuola demonstrates how familiar youth themes can support ambitious festival cinema without losing accessibility. Friendship, attraction, jealousy, school and social acceptance are immediately understandable narrative hooks, while Samani uses them to explore gender and identity without reducing the film to a conventional teen romance.
Its production model is equally international. Nefertiti Film produced with Rai Cinema, with France's Tomsa Films and ARTE France Cinéma co-producing; Lucky Red handles Italian distribution and Rai Cinema International Distribution represents the film internationally.
➡️ Industry Insight: Coming-of-age remains commercially and culturally flexible because its basic experiences travel easily across borders. Festival cinema can use familiar youth dynamics to introduce more complex questions without sacrificing accessibility. Un anno di scuola shows the value of pairing emerging performers with a story whose social tension audiences immediately understand.
Creative Analysis: A Friendship Story Disguised as a Romantic Disruption
At the center of Un anno di scuola are four young people trying to understand what Fred's arrival means for a friendship structure that once felt permanent. Desire complicates that structure, but the deeper transformation concerns who belongs, who possesses power inside the group and what each person must give up as relationships change.
The creative strength comes from making adolescence unstable rather than neatly transformative. Growing up does not simply reveal a finished identity; it requires Fred and the boys to discover that relationships can change them in ways they do not entirely control.
Storytelling: One New Person Changes an Entire Friendship System
The narrative begins with a highly efficient disruption: Fred enters a class where she is the only girl and gravitates toward three inseparable friends. Her arrival changes not only her own life but the equilibrium among Antero, Pasini and Mitis.
That creates four interconnected coming-of-age journeys rather than one simple romantic triangle. Every attempt to bring Fred closer to the group also changes the relationships already inside it.
Direction: Laura Samani Makes Belonging More Complicated Than Acceptance
Samani's key choice is refusing to position Fred simply as a victim of exclusion. Fred is described as feisty and curious, actively wanting to become part of the boys' circle.
That agency makes the compromises more revealing. The film can examine gendered pressure without removing Fred's own desire to participate in the environment producing it.
Performances: New Faces Give the Friendship a Sense of Discovery
Stella Wendick plays Fred, with Giacomo Covi as Antero, Pietro Giustolisi as Pasini and Samuel Volturno as Mitis. Their emergence became part of the film's festival identity, particularly after Covi's Venice Best Actor win and the collective NuovoImaie Talent Award for the three young male performers.
The casting process reinforces that freshness: the uploaded production trivia notes that Covi and Giustolisi were discovered during a search around Trieste teenage meeting places, Volturno was noticed at school and Wendick auditioned in Stockholm before learning Italian for the role.
Visual Style: Trieste Grounds the Story in a Specific Border-City Identity
The film was shot in Trieste, with Inès Tabarin serving as cinematographer, Federica Bologna as production designer and Loredana Buscemi as costume designer. Its 1.66:1 presentation gives the film a comparatively contained frame for a story centered on bodies, groups and the shifting proximity between four young people.
Trieste also matters narratively because Fred arrives there from Sweden as an outsider. Place therefore becomes part of her transition: she is learning a new city, language, school culture and friendship system simultaneously.
Themes: Belonging, Gender, Friendship, Desire and Individuality
The film's strongest theme is the contradiction between belonging and autonomy. Fred wants to become part of something, while the boys must confront what happens when the closed friendship they have always known suddenly includes someone they each desire differently.
Gender intensifies that conflict. Fred is not simply a new student but the only girl inside a male environment, meaning acceptance cannot be separated from the expectations attached to being perceived as different.
What Makes It Different: Belonging Is Not Automatically the Happy Ending
Many coming-of-age narratives present finding friends as liberation. Un anno di scuola complicates that assumption by asking whether entry into a group remains desirable when membership progressively requires compromise.
That transforms the conventional outsider narrative. The real achievement is not simply getting inside the group; it is learning where to draw the boundary between adapting to others and abandoning yourself.
➡️ Creative Insight: Un anno di scuola understands that belonging can be both liberating and restrictive. Fred changes the boys' friendship while their expectations also begin changing her. The film finds its coming-of-age truth in discovering that acceptance has limits when the price becomes identity.
If You Liked Un anno di scuola (2025): Coming-of-Age Stories About Friendship, Identity and Finding Where You Belong
How to Have Sex (2023) by Molly Manning Walker: When Belonging to the Group Makes Personal Boundaries Harder to Hear
Three teenage friends travel together expecting freedom, parties and formative experiences, but group expectations gradually complicate the difference between what someone wants and what they feel expected to do.
➡️ Why It Connects: Both films examine adolescence through the pressure created by belonging. Friendship offers security while simultaneously shaping behavior and expectations. Growing up means learning that being part of the group does not require surrendering personal boundaries.
Girls Will Be Girls (2024) by Shuchi Talati: When Growing Up Means Discovering Who Gets to Control a Young Woman's Choices
A teenage girl's first relationship unfolds within a school environment where desire, rules and adult expectations continually compete with her developing sense of self.
➡️ Why It Connects: Both films place young women inside environments where identity is being shaped by other people's expectations. Desire becomes part of a larger negotiation over autonomy. Their coming-of-age journeys depend on discovering which choices genuinely belong to them.
Paradise Is Burning (2023) by Mika Gustafson: When Young Women Build Their Own Rules for Belonging
Three sisters left largely on their own create a temporary world of freedom, loyalty and improvisation while the possibility of outside intervention threatens the life they have constructed together.
➡️ Why It Connects: Both films treat belonging as something young people actively construct rather than passively inherit. Relationships provide protection but also require negotiation and sacrifice. Identity emerges through deciding what kind of connection can coexist with independence.
➡️ If You Liked Insight: These films understand adolescence as a negotiation between connection and autonomy. Friendship can provide the freedom to become yourself while simultaneously creating pressure to conform. The most meaningful coming-of-age moment arrives when belonging and individuality no longer have to be opposites.
Final Verdict: Belonging Means Little If Acceptance Requires Becoming Someone Else
Un anno di scuola takes a deceptively familiar teenage setup—the new girl, three close male friends and competing attraction—and redirects attention toward something more universal. Fred's real challenge is not deciding which boy she likes, but discovering what she is prepared to surrender in order to become part of their world.
That gives Samani's film resonance beyond its 2007 school setting. Almost everyone has experienced environments where fitting in requires adaptation; growing up means learning which compromises create connection and which ones gradually erase individuality.
➡️ Final Verdict: Un anno di scuola makes belonging both the desire and the danger of adolescence. Fred's arrival transforms a male friendship group, but joining that group also transforms her. The film's most enduring insight is that acceptance matters only when there is still room to remain yourself.
Quick Facts: When Finding Your Group Means Discovering Your Boundaries
Director | Laura Samani |
Screenplay / Writers | Elisa Dondi / Laura Samani |
Source Material | Freely adapted from Un anno di scuola by Giani Stuparich |
Lead Cast | Stella Wendick / Giacomo Covi / Pietro Giustolisi / Samuel Volturno |
Key Cast | Magnus Krepper / Stefano Attruia / Aurora Fabris / Silvia Gallerano |
Countries | Italy / France |
Year | 2025 |
Runtime | 102 min |
Genre | Coming-of-Age Drama |
Languages | Italian / English / Swedish |
Cinematography | Inès Tabarin |
Editing | Chiara Dainese |
Music | Music supervision — Francesco Menegat |
Production Design | Federica Bologna |
Production | Nefertiti Film with Rai Cinema / Tomsa Films with ARTE France Cinéma |
Producers | Nadia Trevisan / Alberto Fasulo / Thomas Lambert |
Italian Distribution | Lucky Red |
International Distribution | Rai Cinema International Distribution |
Festival Profile | Venice Film Festival 2025 — Orizzonti Competition |
Awards & Recognition | 4 wins & 5 nominations; Venice Orizzonti Best Actor for Giacomo Covi; Authors Under 40 Best Director for Laura Samani; NuovoImaie Talent Award; Magic Lantern Award; Zurich Golden Eye nomination; Seville Golden Giraldillo nomination; 2026 Silver Ribbon casting nomination; Cannes Écrans Juniors second place |
Movie Trend | Coming-of-Age Drama — When a Girl Trying to Fit Into a Male Friend Group Risks Losing Herself |
Broad Trend | Belonging Without Losing Yourself — When Audiences Connect With People Trying to Fit In Without Giving Up Who They Are |
Central Characters | Fred / Antero / Pasini / Mitis |
Core Conflict | Fred wants acceptance inside a close male friendship group but increasingly confronts what she must sacrifice to obtain it |
Creative Hook | The only girl in an all-male class tries to become part of three boys' lifelong friendship |
Core Themes | Belonging / individuality / friendship / gender / desire / peer pressure / adolescence |
Why Watch | A festival-recognized coming-of-age drama that turns a familiar teenage friendship setup into a sharper exploration of the cost of fitting in |
Final Insights: The Future of Belonging Stories Is About Finding Communities That Leave Room for Difference
Belonging Without Losing Yourself captures a wider contemporary tension between the human need for connection and the growing expectation that people should live authentically. The most resonant stories no longer treat acceptance as sufficient; they ask whether the community offering it allows people to remain different once they enter.
Coming-of-age cinema is especially suited to that shift because adolescence is where the desire to fit in can feel most urgent. Un anno di scuola turns one school year into a reminder that growing up is not simply about discovering where you belong, but learning which forms of belonging are actually worth keeping.
➡️ Final Insight: Everyone wants somewhere they feel accepted. The harder lesson is recognizing when acceptance has become conditional on changing too much of yourself. Real belonging begins when connection and individuality are allowed to exist together.
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