SHE WAS BORN to people with anarchic and anti-fascist values in a time of dictatorship. For this reason, she was never schooled formally, but educated by her parents and siblings. Her life would take dramatic turns, involving a career on stage, a stint in prison and the recurring prospect of suicide. But it was her writing that held the threads together. Her magnum opus, The Art of Joy, which took her nine years to write and faced much rejection, was published two years after her death in 1996. This is Goliardo Sapienza. And Fuori, directed by Mario Martone, tells her story.

Even if you have seen none of the films in this year’s European Film Festival in South Africa, or if you’ve never seen any film during any of the 12 years that this festival has been in South Africa, see this one. It is not available for streaming, and will only be screened on Saturday 18 October at 2pm at The Bioscope in Milpark, Johannesburg and on Sunday 19 October at The Labia in Cape Town.

Featuring a gorgeous understanding of light and magnificently cast, the work feels effortlessly elegant and sexy without turning foolish or smarmy. On a level it enables you to gratuitously indulge in the sheer beauty of Italian aesthetics of the 1980s, from the cars and the clothing to the architecture and sense of space in the world. On another, it tells an important literary tale, which is as tragically clichéd as the life of Vincent Van Gogh – a gifted person finds only poverty and rejection in life, but immortality and celebration posthumously.

And yet, in its telling and the way in which it is cast and performed, Fuori is like a breath of dangerous and thrilling air. Valeria Golino plays Sapienza with depth and a sense of boldness conjoined with deep vulnerability. Flashbacks riddle the chronology of the work and her brief stint in Rebibbia prison in Rome in 1980 for theft. It was a formative moment in her life, and directorially, this context is handled with the compassion, clarity and brutality of Tom Fontana’s HBO series Oz, from the late 1990s, but it is also evocative of the chorus of infernal spirits in Monteverdi’s Orfeo of 1607.

But it is Sapienza’s friendship with former cellmate Roberta (Matilda De Angelis) that conjures up an understanding of the potency of deep friendship, the likes of which we saw in Unicorns, also on this festival. It’s about being able and willing to give all you have to a friendship which matters. Whatever the cost.

• Fuori is directed by Mario Martone and features a cast headed by Matilda De Angelis, Luisa De Santis, Elodie, Corrado Fortuna, Antonio Gerardi, Francesco Gheghi, Valeria Golino, Paola Pace, Ondina Quadri, Carolina Rosi, Daphne Scoccia, Francesco Siciliano, Sonia Zhou Fenxia. Written by Mario Martone and Ippolita Di Majo based on the life story of Goliarda Sapienza, it is produced by Paolo Del Brocco and features creative input by Valerio Vigliar (composer), Paolo Carnera (cinematography), Jacopo Quadri (editing), Raffaele Di Florio and Paola Rota (casting) and Sara Antongirolami and Cristina Pucci (costumes). In Italian with English subtitles, it is part of the 12^th European Film Festival in South Africa, screening at The Bioscope independent cinema in Milpark, Johannesburg on Saturday 18 October at 2pm, and The Labia in Cape Town on Sunday 19 October 2025 at 2pm only.