Italy Bets on Faustian Horror
TORONTO – Now that the autumn festival circuit is drawing to a close, and the initial wave of post-Venice and Toronto buzz begins to solidify into strategic campaigns, Italy has made its move for the 2027 Academy Awards. In a move that surprised industry insiders and delighted genre enthusiasts alike, ANICA has officially selected Paolo Strippoli’s The Spiral (L’estranea) as the country’s official submission for the Best International Feature Film category.
For a nation whose cinematic identity on the global stage is so deeply intertwined with human dramas and biting social comedies – genres Italian auteur cinema has traditionally executed with unparalleled mastery – Strippoli’s film represents a radical and incredibly refreshing departure from the norm.
Rather than leaning into the familiar comfort of generational family melancholia or the sweeping romanticism of the Mediterranean, Italy is betting its Oscar fortunes on unadulterated, pitch-black Faustian horror.
At its core, The Spiral is a visceral morality chiller that subverts the bourgeois security of an affluent Roman family. The narrative framework centers on an estrangement between a mother, Anna (Jasmine Trinca), and her daughter, Alice (Romana Maggiora Vergano), unspooling a thirty-year history rooted in a literal deal with the devil.
When a horrific accident threatens to leave a young Alice permanently altered, a desperate Anna accepts a miraculous intervention from an enigmatic entity known as The Stranger – played with a stylized malice by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. Naturally, the transaction demands an escalating, agonizing price over the decades, transforming a standard family domestic space into a psychological battleground of guilt and dread.
What makes The Spiral a particularly compelling contender is the raw, therapeutic impulse driving its creation. This isn’t merely an exercise in jump-scares or cheap genre tropes; it is art operating as profound personal exorcism. Strippoli has been remarkably candid about the film’s origins, revealing that the script was born from a severe period of personal anxiety regarding his own fear of losing agency.
In discussing the intense writing process, the director noted that crafting the narrative functioned essentially as “a long psychoanalytic session… much cheaper than an hour of therapy”. That raw, unfiltered vulnerability bleeds into every frame, elevating the film from a standard creature feature into a deeply felt metaphor for the toxic, controlling undercurrents that can rot a family from within.
By sending a stylized genre piece to Los Angeles, the Italian selection committee is signaling a bold evolution in the country’s contemporary cinematic landscape. Following its highly successful run at Venice and a runner-up finish for the People’s Choice Award in TIFF’s Midnight Madness section, The Spiral proves that Italian filmmakers can command international attention without relying on the historical laurels of neorealism.
Whether the Academy embraces this sun-drenched, summer horror remains to be seen, but it undoubtedly marks a potential new chapter for Italian cinema on the world stage.
Images courtesy of Propaganda, Dinamo Film & Rai Cinema
Massimo Volpe is a filmmaker and freelance writer from Toronto: he writes reviews of Italian films/content on Netflix
