The award-winning movie “Vermiglio” portrays what seems to be an ordinary family life during World War Two and the roles that each family member was confronted with at the time. While the father is educating the members of the village, the mother is busy giving birth to one child after the other. It seems like to grow up as a girl meant to only wait around for your own motherhood. When one of the three daughters feels attracted to the “strange girl” of the village and is confronted with her lust, she feels compelled to develop odd methods of self-punishment.

Queerness, gender norms and the subtle consequences of war disrupt the family dynamics and when a deserting soldier enters the family, their standing in the village takes a turn. As the seasons change from winter to summer, more and more secrets of each family member are revealed and with the end of the war a transformation lies ahead.

The stillness and beauty of nature collide with the harshness of rural life and that contrast is captured through the eye of the director, whose own father grew up in Vermiglio and therefore has personal ties to the village and its story.