A Girl Returned

A Girl Returned (L'arminuta, 2021) is an Italian drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Giuseppe Bonito. At thirteen, a girl is handed back to strangers who turn out to be her biological parents. No warning. No explanation given to her or to us.

Based on Donatella Di Pietrantonio's prize-winning novel — Campiello Prize, 2017 — the film follows her as she tries to make sense of a second family in a house that is louder, poorer, and utterly unfamiliar. Vanessa Scalera and Fabrizio Ferracane play the birth parents with the specific discomfort of people who cannot find the words for what they did. It is a slow, precise film about the gap between belonging and being claimed. Stream A Girl Returned online on iFILM.