Synopsis
Bad Tales (Favolacce, 2020) is an Italian drama you can watch online on iFILM. A heatwave settles over a quiet suburb on the edge of Rome. The families look ordinary from the street — tidy gardens, polite kids, top marks in their notebooks — but something rotten is leaking out underneath all of it.
Brothers Fabio and Damiano D'Innocenzo film this with the cold patience of someone watching from a window. The fathers belittle and control; the mothers stay silent and absorb it; every adult around pretends nothing is wrong. Meanwhile the children store up a quiet rage that has nowhere to go but out. The film moves toward its ending so calmly that the calm itself becomes unbearable. Elio Germano plays one of the fathers, and his soft-spoken menace cuts deeper than any shouting would.
The screenplay took the Silver Bear at the Berlinale, and you can feel why: the power lives in what's withheld, in everything the camera refuses to show head-on. This is slow, unsettling cinema for anyone ready for an Italian social drama that offers no comfort. Stream Bad Tales (2020) online on iFILM.
Starring
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