Classmates (Italian Film Festival)

Click here if you liked this article 0

https://italianfilmfestival.com.au/films/iff26-classmates

Date Reviewed: 05/09/2026

Sex. Power. Money. Drugs. Four words you shouldn't expect to hear on school grounds yet they define the everyday reality of the self-professed "garbage" cohort of pupils in Umberto Carteni's Classmates. Based on Gaja Cenciarelli's autobiographical novel, the film introduces English teacher "Pressoré," played by Anna Ferzetti, who refuses to accept the label her students have given themselves. Instead, she sees a future that can still be shaped through disciplined study and an adult who refuses to let go of hope and love.

Carteni opens the film on a close-up of a phone ringing at 5:30 a.m., Pressoré awake then cutting to a mid-shot of her finishing up on the toilet. It's a fitting visual for the rest of the film being a nod to the kitchen-sink realism film movement, as Carteni strips away pleasantries to depict the raw grit of daily life for a woman navigating a lower socio-economic class and the pressures of this domestic reality.

In under 95 minutes, Carteni achieves remarkable depth of the characters through voiceover narration for each classmate, interspersed throughout the film to reveal their fates as they break the fourth wall, staring into a close-up that uncomfortably lingers with purpose. Ferzetti brings real texture to a teacher caught in the blurred line between simply teaching and investing deeply in her students, much like a mother steering the course of their future. The stakes feel personal for Pressoré too who lost her own best friend and classmate as a teenager.

Unity seems impossible for a group of misfits born into broken families and hardened by bad habits, yet they know they only have each other. The classroom may be the safest place they have, given how bleak the outside world has already proven to be for them. Packed with individual stories with powerful performances, the film traces how a melting pot of anger gradually channels into focus, as the students come together for more than just their final exams.

You cannot save everyone, and Classmates is honest about that reality of the untold toll of resilience it takes to help a new generation break cycles of violence and stereotypes. The film doesn't shy away from loss, and it will hit hard.  Anyone who has ever felt reduced to a number or a grade by an indifferent system, student or teacher, will recognize something painfully true here.

Finally, Carteni has assembled a cast that brings fierce authenticity to every frame, and he directs with a steady hand, never letting the film tip into melodrama or cliché. Classmates earns its emotional weight honestly. It is one of the rawest, most affecting entries in this year’s festival lineup. A film that looks at the wreckage of youth and still dares to see a way through.

Review by Sandra Lee