Opening in theaters on December 3, Fuori marks a deeply personal and politically resonant chapter in director Mario Martone’s career. With heartfelt intensity, the Naples-born filmmaker revives the spirit of Goliarda Sapienza—a cult Italian writer whose groundbreaking novel, The Art of Joy, achieved critical acclaim only after her death. Instead of adapting that novel, Martone turns to a more intimate and piercing narrative: a portrait crafted from shadows, survival, and a refusal to be silenced.
Delving into the Hidden Life of Goliarda Sapienza
Far from a conventional biopic, Fuori finds its soul in two of Sapienza’s autobiographical works—The University of Rebibbia and The Certainties of Doubt. Both texts recount her brief imprisonment in 1980 after she was caught stealing jewelry, a desperate act born of poverty and isolation. It was a low point, yet Martone treats it as a window—not into shame, but into awakening.
Instead of dramatizing the prison experience, the film quietly observes it. Through Martone’s lens, prison becomes a contained world of feminine resilience, where physical confinement contrasts hauntingly with emotional liberation. He captures the quiet rituals of survival, empathy, and unraveling identity with a realism that verges on documentary filmmaking.
Valeria Golino delivers a stunning portrayal of Sapienza, imbuing her with fiery tenderness. Poverty, repression, and marginalization never reduced her spirit—Golino’s Sapienza exists in defiance of every structure that attempted to define or diminish her.
Fuori: Where Freedom Begins with Defiance
The film’s title, “Fuori”—Italian for “outside”—echoes well beyond prison walls. It speaks to Sapienza’s lifelong stance: outside of convention, outside binaries, and far from the polished narratives Italy preferred during the 1980s. She lived—and wrote—from the margins.
Following her release, Sapienza reconnects with Roberta, a young woman deeply scarred by heroin addiction, state violence, and a fractured past. Their unfolding relationship becomes the emotional center of the film—a deeply human bond, delicate and thorny, built on unspoken trust and hard-won vulnerability.
A Tapestry of Desire, Pain, and Healing
Roberta is portrayed as a raw, unpredictable figure—fragile yet fierce, caught between contradictory forces. Her presence conveys a queer yearning that feels urgent, unarticulated, and achingly real. She longs for love but has learned only survival.
Sapienza doesn’t push or impose. She simply creates space—for curiosity, for recovery, and for truth. With quiet strength, she becomes a kind of sanctuary. Where Roberta hesitates, Sapienza moves forward—with conviction born from the cost of living authentically in a world that punishes difference.
Martone captures their exchanges with remarkable restraint. There’s no manipulation, no contrivance. Just a dense undercurrent of emotional, physical, and intellectual tension. In Fuori, love is never simple, but always potent—whether as a whisper of friendship, longing, or resistance itself.
Goliarda Sapienza: A Radical Voice Who Lived Beyond Labels
Perhaps the film’s greatest triumph is how it reclaims Sapienza’s audacious queerness—not just in sexuality, but in politics, art, and identity. A performer, thinker, feminist, and partner to both male and female contemporaries, she flows through the film like a woman in refusal—refusal to conform, to concede, to remain unheard.
Importantly, Martone avoids mythologizing her. We see Sapienza bruised, uncertain, often lost—but never broken. This refusal to capitulate defines her brilliance as a writer and a rebel. Her life was a mission in pursuit of joy, pleasure, and selfhood, lived wholly on her terms.
Valeria Golino is magnetic in the role—never simplifying, but embodying every contradiction. She doesn’t explain Sapienza—she channels her. The result is nothing short of mesmerizing.
A Story Rooted in the 1980s, Resonating Today
Though set amidst the social currents of the 1980s, Fuori feels fiercely contemporary. In a world increasingly hostile to queer identities, bodily autonomy, and political dissent, Sapienza’s story surfaces like a flare. To live “outside” today is still to challenge patriarchy, heteronormativity, and restrictive binaries—with purpose and courage.
Martone uses Sapienza’s legacy to craft a quiet manifesto: freedom is not an endpoint, but an ever-unfinished effort. Messy, vulnerable, vital.
Honoring Rebellious Women Who Refuse Silence
Fuori does more than restore the visibility of one extraordinary woman—it celebrates a lineage of uncontainable lives. Women who loved beyond boundaries, created against odds, and endured systems not built for them. They include not only Sapienza, but the countless outsiders—prisoners, artists, wanderers—whose stories still go untold.
This is not just cinema. It’s reclamation. By voicing sapphic desire and unspoken love in an era that offered neither language nor haven, Martone’s film breaks silences and names those who have lived too long in their shadow.
For more insights and coverage on the film, visit the dedicated feature on the LGBTQIA+ platform: Cannes 2025 – Fuori.
