Country: Italy
Genre: Drama
Year of Production: 2006
Format: 35mm
Running Time: 108 minutes
Certificate: 15
Theatrical Release date: 28th January 2008
DVD Release date: 26th May 2008

Italian actor KIM ROSSI STUART (Romanzo Criminale, The Keys to the House) makes his impressive directorial debut with this moving and richly rewarding coming-of-age drama that he co-wrote with LINDA FERRI (The Son's Room). Featuring a stand-out debut performance from the young ALESSANDRO MORACE as Tommi, and from Rossi Stuart himself as the raging single father, LIBERO rightly won the Directors' Fortnight prize at the Cannes Film Festival and has been hailed as a modern update on the masters of the French and Italian neo-realist tradition.

Renato, a freelance cameraman, is bringing up his 11-year-old son Tommi and daughter Viola alone, after being abandoned by his wife, Stefania (BARBORA BOBULOVA). A strong believer in tough love, Renato offers kindness with harsh discipline. Their individual loneliness and collective yearning for the return of the most important woman in their lives creates a strong bond within the surviving family unit. That is until Stefania returns out of the blue...

"thoroughly convincing" CRITICS' CHOICE
(4 STARS)
TIME OUT

"exacting... a confident portrait of everyday strife, full of telling details that must surely have been culled from real life."
(4 STARS)
THE GUARDIAN

"moving, honest and flawlessly acted."
THE OBSERVER

"If this gorgeously subtle take on family life is anything to go by, Italian cinema is enjoying a renaissance... full of sly, sad humour... Tommi (Alessandro Morace) is an enigma reminiscent of Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows."
(4 STARS)
THE EVENING STANDARD

"a heartbreaking performance from Morace... Impressive"
THE TIMES

"brilliantly acted... a heartfelt film that lingers in the mind"
THE SUNDAY TIMES

"Heartbreaking yet hopeful Italian drama... outstanding"
THE INDEPENDENT

"A little jewel from heaven that confirms the rebirth of Italian cinema"
LE MONDE

"a strong feel for the pressures of childhood... it's disarming"
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

"a sincere, unsentimental portrait of the bond between father and son"
DAILY EXPRESS

"impressive"
(4 STARS)
TOTAL FILM

"richly rewarding"
(4 STARS)
FILM FOUR

"effortlessly captured... compellingly intimate... a remarkably sensitive, unsentimental portrayal"
(4 STARS)
METRO

4 STARS
LONDON LITE

"...one of the best first films of recent years"
IL MESSAGGERO

"a bittersweet story, tender and aggressive... expressed with the same sensitivity with which certain of De Sica’s children were 'watching us'... An excellent debut for Kim Rossi Stuart"
IL TEMPO

"a story that is simple, profound, touching... With the extraordinary little Alessandro Morace, for his first screen appearance... an intense, always amazing, Barbora Bobulova... The film begins in a dramatic crescendo, almost unbearable in its brutal intensity..."
IL GIORNALE

"an incredible directing debut"
IL SECOLO XIX

"A story of love and rage between a father and son... Kim Rossi Stuart’s directing debut is a film surprisingly mature and composed... With the performances of two children as impressive as they are unknown (Alessandro Morace and Marta Nobili)"
LIBERAZIONE