The City of the Living
Drama Thriller Italian
Luca is twenty-three years old. He lives with an adoptive family who loves him. He moves between the suburbs and the city center with his friends and has a girlfriend with whom he shares a love that is young, yet significant for them both. Luca is searching for his path at an age when everything still feels possible and, at the same time, already lost; in this pursuit, he leads a double life. One night, after a seemingly chance encounter, the trajectory of Luca’s life is shattered, colliding with blind and senseless violence.
| Cast: | Emanuele Maria Di Stefano, Valerio Mastandrea, Simona Senzacqua, Roberta Mattei, Gaia Merlonghi, |
|---|---|
| Director: | Edoardo Gabbriellini |
| Writer: | Damiano D'Innocenzo, Fabio D'Innocenzo |
| Editor: | Jacopo Ramella Pajrin |
All Guild Reviews of "The City of the Living"
A Sadistic True-Crime Breeds Edoardo Gabbriellini’s Chilling Anti-Voyeuristic Study
Venice Film Festival 2026 | Emanuele Maria Di Stefano powers this murky, sexually ambiguous Orizzonti title which retraces the 2016 murder of 23-year-old Luca Varani.
True-crime narratives trade in lurid shocks. They have this unseemly, grotesque fascination that inadvertently replaces human consideration. The rush for dramatic re-staging bleeds out any concern for the victim, what their fuller story preceding the tragedy might be. The event itself becomes the driving lens through which we view an entire life. Premiering in Orizzonti Competition at the Venice Film Festival, Edoardo Gabbriellini’s The City of The Living’s greatest triumph is that it wholly goes beyond this limiting approach, constantly finding the complex, fledgling humanity of the victim.
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