Vermiglio, the feature film directed by the Bolzano-based director, is on the shortlist announced today by the Academy in the Best International Film category. The Italian film is among the 15 foreign films that are still in the race to be selected. Final nominations will be announced on January 12, while the 97th Academy Awards ceremony is scheduled at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday, March 2.

Vermiglio begins and ends with a baby's wail. And at the end, a lullaby dedicated to Saint Lucia lulls us toward the end credits. A film that has the smell of wood and the taste of milk just milked and then put to sleep. It is 1944, the war is coming to an end, but the tragedy is not. Because the consequences of a conflict are not only served on a battlefield, in barracks or trenches.

Even in Vermiglio, a Trentino municipality high in the mountains, battles, though distant, have disrupted daily life. Children died from the cold, many women from wives turned into widows and mothers of children who will probably never return home. Priests and teachers have taken the place of fathers.

In the classrooms of the schools, people learn Italian on the desks and at the same time do gymnastics. And those inaccessible peaks that surround the village remind the inhabitants how small human beings are. And then fate bursts in, without asking permission (then again, it never does), because the future always turns out to be unpredictable. The arrival of Pietro a Sicilian soldier, who deserted and saved the life of Attilio, a fellow soldier from Vermiglio, changes the balance, especially those of three sisters, Lucia, Ada and Flavia and their parents.