Venice 2026: A Common Story (dir. Anna Foglietta) | Review
In A Common Story, Anna Foglietta carries out a sharp dissection of marriage that is dark, justified, and unflinching – showing every angle of its reality with Alba Rohrwacher and Guido Caprino delivering a combined triumph.
Erika has been carrying the question for so long, it has worn a place inside her. Finally, she asks: “Mom, why don’t you come and live with us? Irene’s room is empty.” Her mother listens, and then – laughter. “Are you out of your mind? I’m happy here.” Erika smiles, lowers her gaze. Her face changes, and she murmurs, “I don’t know what happens in my mind.” But she does know. She’s just not sure she’s ready to admit it.
I’ve always believed the mind is a complex medium. Its neurons are arranged precisely to balance every emotion contained within. But one dark hole that burrows into the wrong side, and all the links begin to crumble. The Mauros were a tight knot – mother Erika (Alba Rohrwacher), father Mauro (Guido Caprino), daughter Irene, woven together with care. Love balanced everything in its place. Then Irene leaves for a foreign land. Just the two of them now, facing each other across a space that once held three. And the knot began to loosen. Loneliness crept in, silence grew loud, and with the shrinking walls came a new kind of intimacy – one that could either hold them tighter or push them apart. The question loiters: is this a gift or a wound?
This may be, as the title indicates, a recognizable scenario – a transitional phase common to human experience. However, director Anna Foglietta’s focus is trained precisely on the challenging moments of moving forward. It is a particular temporal arc that guides us through new directions, recollections of the past, and present-tense encounters. The film invites us to sit with loneliness – not as absence, but as a language and a way to truly understand what we’ve lost. It shows the time we must take for ourselves when the ground beneath us changes. When balance tips, everything falls apart. The director lingers in those moments of transition – love shifting, time stretching, the self-retreating. It is something deeply unsettling, especially when the bond between two people begins to fray, more like a storehouse of love tested against the very principles it was built on.
Upon closer examination, the film also presents a loss of the magnetic force that once bound the couple. Their exchanges are reduced to discussions of food, acquaintances, and future plans – yet the affective resonance that constitutes attraction is palpably absent. This absence functions as a troubling signal that disrupts the couple’s core equilibrium. Erika turns inward, searching for the pieces of herself she’s misplaced. Her husband, meanwhile, is pulled into unfamiliar territory – learning, stumbling, confronting decisions that feel larger than him. They exist in a complicated space, heavy with unspoken lessons. And it’s not just about them, as the ripples reach their family, brushing against wounds that have long been hidden, stirring grief that was never fully named.
Then come the internal questions – Can love flow freely with age? Who carries the fault? And why must we turn inward, to ourselves, to find what we’ve lost? Is it a whole ecosystem of love condensed only within the circles of a couple? The film interrogates the architecture of marriage, how time erodes connection, how touch fades.
Produced by Viola Prestieri, Valeria Golino, Nicola Giuliano, Moreno Zani, and Malcom Pagani, A Common Story, which is part of Orizzonti this year, holds up a scripture of marriage – not of law, but of love, in all its tender and brutal truths. It shows us how two couples are shaken, side by side, their lives dissected in the dark yet sensible light of marital reality. It is almost a clinical gaze – intimate yet unflinching – a diagnosis of what ails, a prescription for what may heal.
Alba Rohrwacher and Guido Caprino bring a quiet, committed diligence to their roles – two people navigating the currents of marriage. The film traces their journey toward truth, toward acceptance, toward the understanding that love outlasts its own struggles. As the seasons shift around them, they change – sometimes beautifully, sometimes painfully. It is a look back at what real couples face, and a reminder that time, in the end, answers what the heart refuses.
The 83rd edition of the Venice International Film Festival is running on September 2-12, 2026.
