Actor-turned director Anna Foglietta is back in Venice in a different guise this year, after serving as the event’s official emcee in 2020.
Foglietta — who is best-known to international audiences for her role in Italy’s smash hit “Perfect Strangers” — is on the Lido with her directorial debut, “A Common Story.” It’s a marriage drama toplined by Alba Rohrwacher, whose credits include Pablo Larraín’s “Maria” and who served on the 2025 Cannes competition jury panel. Rohrwacher plays a middle-aged woman named Erika whose relationship with her husband, Mauro, and their simple life in the countryside is disrupted when their daughter Irene leaves to go to university abroad. Their house feels empty, and the balance on which they had based their lives seems to crumble.
The film, being sold by True Colours, is produced by HT Film, Indigo Film, Tenderstories and Blu One Lab with support from Rai Cinema and in collaboration with HBO Max.
Foglietta spoke to Variety about working with Rohrwacher and shares her thoughts about Venice’s gender imbalance.
How did “A Common Story” germinate?
From my observation of the world. I spend a lot of time with the parents of my children’s friends. I’ve realized that, even observing myself as a parent, we’ve truly become too child-centric. Our obsession with everything a child does from the moment it is born is perhaps the fundamental alibi that allows us to effectively avoid taking care of ourselves [as adults].
There is a whole generation that does not really know itself and doesn’t have the will or the desire to do so. So together with screenwriter Matteo Ferri, with whom I wrote the story, I started to think about how to bring these elements together. I thought about a very simple couple. I’m very passionate about the part of humanity that never basks in the spotlight. They deploy energies and strategies to keep this world turning, but nobody cares. It always seems that great revolutions, even profound emotional and psychoanalytic ones, are always the prerogative of the bourgeoisie just because they have all the right cultural tools.
So I focused on two very simple people. Smart, with great emotional intelligence. But undoubtedly very simple. People who don’t have the tools that allow them to really examine and understand each other. Some people have a really serious difficulty with that. I thought it would be intriguing that with this type of simplicity, we could get all of humanity to speak. To reach a truly universal level.
What was it like working with Alba Rohrwacher?
She is an actress who loves to be guided. And I was glued to the camera guiding her, at times shouting out lines to her, even if the camera was rolling. I really want to say that Alba had a lot of guts. I told her: “I need a woman who is real. A woman who, aside from all else, is going through [menopause] that is extremely difficult — and only us women can know how difficult it is. In fact at a certain point her husband brutally tells her that “no one needs you anymore.” It comes out the wrong way, but it’s true. Because that’s what the culture teaches us. I mean, fortunately, there is a new wave of empowerment, especially linked to women in menopause But when the kids grow up and work continues to be routine, you still feel like you’re in a zone of inevitable decline. It’s very tough. So I told her: “You have to have the courage to show yourself exactly as you are.”
Courtesy Filmitalia
Speaking of female empowerment, how do you feel about the fact that there is only one woman in competition at Venice this year?
I think objectively this is a horrible year from that point of view. It’s shocking to see just one woman in competition. In past years, however, it must be said, things went better in Venice. It’s interesting that in Horizons the gender balance situation is much better [eight out of 19 films in the section are directed by women] because it’s the more experimental section. This indicates that women are bold directors. We are being bold in our gaze, our vision, and our direction, and for me this is a virtue and a value. But it must be said that the problem is systemic. The system doesn’t help support female directors and the female perspective. We absolutely need to focus on this new perspectives because today, as we have seen, it’s a huge resource.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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