The highest-grossing film at the Italian box office in 2023 will likely end up being Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. But a local back-and-white feature will lead the way when it comes to admissions.
There’s Still Tomorrow, a post-war feminist drama comedy that marks the directorial debut of popular Italian actress Paola Cortellesi, has taken $34m (€30.9m) since its release by Vision Distribution on October 26 – behind the $35.3m (€32.1m) grossed by Warner Bros tentpole Barbie following its release in July.
But when it comes to admissions, There’s Still Tomorrow has sold 4.55 million tickets compared to Barbie’s 4.39 million.
The Italian feature had a modest opening weekend of $1.76m (€1.6m) following its world premiere at Haifa International Film Festival and playing as the opening title of Rome Film Fest, where it won three awards.
A combination of strong word-of-mouth and a public holiday on November 1 took the box office cume to $7.7m (€7m) on its second weekend. It has climbed steadily across subsequent weekends and remains on around 400 screens going into the Christmas holidays.
The film stars Cortellesi as Delia, who plots an act of rebellion against her violent husband, played by Valerio Mastandrea, in a bid to escape the patriarchy of Italian society in 1946.
Cortellesi, who also wrote the screenplay with Giulia Calenda and Furio Andreotti, is best known as a singer and actor with a string of David Di Donatello nominations to her credit, including for The Last Will Be Last (2016) and Like A Cat On A Highway (2018).
The feature is co-produced by Fremantle-owned Wildside and Vision Distribution, a Rome-based outfit owned by Sky Italia.
It marks a major boost for Italian film following a period of post-pandemic theatrical fatigue, during which time no local feature had topped €10m at the box office. There’s Still Tomorrow has shifted Italy’s share of its local box office from 18% to 25% across 2023.
But even this success cannot make up for a tough year with total box office in October down 22% on the same period in pre-Covid 2019 and 20% down on 2019 in mid-December.
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