"We have a problem: you're fat." The protagonist (Carolina Crescentini) of Unfitting, a short film by Giovanna Mezzogiorno presented at the 18th edition of the Rome Film Festival, is an actress who hears this sentence over and over. A producer says it. A director says it. A costumer says it. A publicist says it. Everyone, it seems, has something to say. The result: despite her talent and a solid career behind her, the woman is forced to nearly abandon her work.
Mezzogiorno draws on her own life for this story. After giving birth to her two children, she endured what we now call body shaming—which is nothing more than outright bullying by a society that worships the aesthetic ideal. Everything must be perfect, polished, size zero. Anything else marks you as disposable in the eyes of social media judges and similar gatekeepers. You're worth nothing.
This film was necessary. Born from an idea by Silvia Grilli, the short is genuinely valuable. We need to smash these taboos and tired clichés. We need to know we're not alone. Mezzogiorno, making her directorial debut here, has the courage to lay bare her vulnerabilities, her fears, her past. In doing so, she leaves the viewer with an authentic testimony: the person who feels inadequate is not at fault. The fault lies with all those who make others feel inadequate.
Real change—a shift in how we think and act, especially in certain professional worlds—must come first. Only then can we truly speak of a society that respects people. Regardless of what size they wear. This is a film worth watching: empathetic and brave.
Read also: Promising Series and Failed Films at the Rome Film Festival
Unfitting was not alone in opening Pandora's box at the Rome Film Festival, which closed on October 29 after nearly two weeks of screenings, director talks, and exhibitions. Mare Fuori 4 did the same—the television series coming to Rai Due and RaiPlay next February, of which the first hundred minutes were shown. Once again, the deeply fragile detainees of the juvenile prison in Campania (played by Massimiliano Caizzo, Matteo Paolillo, Maria Esposito, and others) are more victims than perpetrators, trapped by the social circumstances from which they come. The show teaches us that the fate to which they seem destined can be overturned. No one is garbage. Every life has value worth preserving. "What matters is the present, not the past," says the educator Beppe (Vincenzo Ferrera) in one of the opening episodes. He's right. Whatever unfolds in 2024 (we won't spoil who shoots whom), one thing is clear: Mare Fuori 4 shows that you can lose yourself and then find yourself again. And in that journey of growth, adults play a vital role. We need courageous guides—people who can serve as anchors in a society that we hope will become ever more inclusive.
The films presented this year in the various sections of the festival all speak to this imperative: raising awareness toward a world less hypocritical and more open to the other, to others. Toward a world that recognizes fragility and tends to it with care.