Trailer for A Street in Palermo (Via Castellana Bandiera).
Acclaimed Sicilian theater director Emma Dante's first feature tells the story of a delightfully theatrical standoff between two stubborn women on a Palermo street too narrow for two cars to pass at once. In one car, Rosa—who grew up a lonely child of circumstance and cultural deprivation—is accompanying her lover, Clara, to a wedding. Their relationship in crisis, the stifling heat only amplifies the palpable tension between them. On the titular street, the couple comes face-to-face, or car-to-car, with Samira, an elderly woman from a poor Albanian community. Having recently lost her daughter, the only person who remains for her is her young grandson, Niccolò. Stuck in the alley, no one will move. Both have their own reasons for being obstinate, but the situation soon takes on gargantuan and absurd proportions—a symbolic fight to death between the two women in which all the neighbors and passers-by will eventually get involved. Behind the comical, uproarious nonsense of the situation, Dante, with a dynamic scenario and a fierce eye, tells the story of this powder keg of an encounter, bringing to light all the mercilessness and roughness of which humankind is still capable.