Italian distributor FilmClub Distribuzione has picked up domestic rights to Irene Dionisio's drama "IDDA," the filmmaker's latest feature, in a deal unveiled exclusively on Sunday. The acquisition gives the Turin-based outfit another director-driven Italian title for its slate and places Dionisio's Mount Etna-set two-hander in front of theatrical audiences across Italy. The film had already begun its run on September 11, 2026, timed to a 93-minute runtime that positions it as a tight, performance-led piece rather than an epic.
"IDDA" centers on Adele and Sofia, two women who grew up together and are now in their thirties. After years apart, they reunite to chase a goal they once dreamed up as girls: standing on the summit of Mount Etna. What should be a celebration of endurance and friendship instead curdles. Something is clearly wrong between them, and the trip detonates into a bitter confrontation that drags old wounds into the open and exposes secrets both had kept buried. The pair separate at the worst possible moment, just as the volcano itself starts to stir. Adele continues upward by herself, carrying the weight of a single wish - that she had turned back, that the two of them had reached the crater together and listened to what the film describes as the mountain's magical breathing. It is a premise built on regret as much as on geology, and it gives Dionisio a narrow, high-stakes frame in which two performers carry nearly everything.
That burden falls to Tecla Insolia as Adele and Romana Maggiora Vergano as Sofia, a pairing that puts two of Italy's most closely watched young actresses opposite each other for what is essentially a two-character chamber piece staged at altitude. Giuseppe De Domenico appears as Salvatore and Mati Galey as Florian, rounding out a compact ensemble. Dionisio directs from her own vision of a story that moves between intimacy and landscape, a combination she has favored across a filmography rooted in observation and social detail. For "IDDA," the volcano is not merely a backdrop; the tremors arrive as the emotional rupture reaches its peak, turning Etna into a kind of silent third character whose rumble comments on everything the women cannot say to each other.
A Mountain as a Pressure Cooker
The choice to set a friendship drama on Europe's most active volcano gives "IDDA" an obvious metaphorical charge, and Dionisio leans into it. The summit represents a shared aspiration the two women formed long before adulthood complicated everything. The climb is physical, but the real ascent in the film is the one neither woman manages: the climb back toward each other. By splitting them apart before the crater, the screenplay denies the audience the reunion the premise seems to promise, then follows Adele as she finishes alone. That final stretch, filtered through her regret, reframes the entire journey as an act of remembering rather than achieving. It is the sort of structural gamble that tends to divide critics, but it also gives the film a distinct identity in a market crowded with conventional female-friendship dramas.
Genre-wise, "IDDA" is classified as a drama and is told in Italian, confirming its place as a domestic Italian production aimed first at local audiences. The 0/10 rating currently attached to the title on TMDb reflects a negligible number of logged votes rather than any verdict on the film itself - a common state of affairs for a feature only days into its release. FilmClub Distribuzione's involvement means the film now has a dedicated Italian home, with the distributor handling its domestic rollout from a September 11, 2026 launch date. For a title with a small cast and a rugged single location, that kind of focused distribution is often the difference between a brief festival footnote and a run that builds through word of mouth.
The deal also says something about the current appetite among Italian distributors for mid-budget, auteur-adjacent work with recognizable young stars. Insolia and Maggiora Vergano have both drawn attention in recent years, and pairing them in a two-hander is a canny commercial move as much as an artistic one. Dionisio, meanwhile, continues to work at the intersection of narrative and documentary-inflected realism, and "IDDA" applies that sensibility to material that is more overtly emotional than some of her earlier projects.
FilmClub Distribuzione did not disclose financial terms of the acquisition, and no details were provided regarding international sales or further release plans beyond Italy. For now, "IDDA" stands as a 93-minute drama about two friends, one volcano, and the distance that opens between people even when they are walking the same path. Whether audiences follow Adele to the top - and whether they forgive her, or Sofia, for what happens on the way - is the question the film leaves smoldering.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
