IFF26: I Want Her Dead

Australian premiere

Il quieto vivere

Based on petty and absurd true events in his hometown, this documentary written and directed by Gianluca Matarrese tells a darkly comic and emotionally charged tale of an unhappy Southern Italian family on the verge of implosion.

In a remote Calabrian village, a domestic war rages between family members living on top of each other in Contrada Viscigliette in a handful of streets clinging to a hill known as Il Cozzo. Luisa, a fierce and headstrong woman, is at war with her sister-in-law Imma, fuelling a bitter feud that consumes their entire household. As tensions spiral, three eccentric aunts in a tragicomic chorus stage a surreal family “trial” in a last-ditch effort to restore peace.

Blending reality and fiction, farce and tragedy, this film delivers an inventive meditation on reconciliation and forgiveness to explore the meaning of blood ties, as the family walks the fine line between everyday resentment and irreversible catastrophe.

OFFICIAL SELECTION - CPH:DOX 2026
OFFICIAL SELECTION - Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2026
OFFICIAL SELECTION – Venice International Film Festival 2025 (Giornate degli Autori)

Italian, Calabrian dialect with English subtitles