Italian Film 'Idda' Premieres at TIFF Platform — SkimNews
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- "Idda" world premiered at TIFF's Platform competition, where starting this year the non-English language winner becomes directly eligible for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
- Irene Dionisio directs as her sophomore feature (after "Pawn Street" and "Shores"), with Tecla Insolia and Romana Maggiora Vergano cast as childhood friends Adele and Sofia who ascend Mount Etna together.
- The title "Idda" means "she" in Sicilian dialect — the same word Sicilians use to personify Mount Etna as a maternal, dangerous, and unknowable force, per Dionisio.
- Dionisio researched approximately ten Italian historical archives, including Bologna's Home Movies archive, for erupting-volcano footage; she notes the 2026 Etna eruption accidentally created a dialogue with the film even though archival material had been selected beforehand.
- The film opens during the Saint Agatha procession in Catania, which Dionisio frames as an atmosphere of communal memory and devotion rather than a simple protective symbol for the volcano.
- Dionisio dedicated "Idda" to her best friend, who died suddenly several years ago — a loss she says deepened when she learned her friend had been thinking about motherhood at the time.
Why it matters: For a sophomore Italian director, landing in TIFF Platform — now the only festival section whose winner feeds directly into the Best International Feature Film Oscar race — makes "Idda" an early Italian contender for the next Academy cycle. The accidental visual rhyme between Dionisio's archival volcano footage and a real 2026 Etna eruption gives the film an uncanny release-window hook most premieres never get.
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