There’s Still Hope: The movie that surpassed Barbie in box office sales in Italy and deals with the theme of violence against women

Greta Gerwig may have made history as the female director with the highest box office revenue in the history of cinema with her movie Barbie, but there is another female director in Italy who broke Gerwig’s record.

50-year-old actress, writer and singer Paola Cortellesi’s film C’è Ancora Domani (There’s Still Hope) is now being released in Europe after beating out both Barbie and Oppenheimer in Italy last year.

The film, which sold almost $40 million in tickets in theaters as of last month and deals with the violence faced by women, was also chosen as the most successful film directed by an Italian female director.

Speaking to the BBC, Cortellesi said he still couldn’t believe the success of the film.

“No one could have predicted the audience’s interest and love for this film,” Cortellesi said and continued:

“I have been acting for about 30 years and writing scripts for the last 10 years, and now I made my first movie at the age of 50. I think it must be a good thing to share the big screen and box office with a huge movie like Barbie, which deals with the experiences of women.”

One of the reasons why the film made such a splash in Italy is that the heroine of the film, Delia, played by Cortellesi, is subjected to physical and emotional abuse by her husband.

In the film, Cortellesi plays a housewife and mother living in poverty in post-war Rome in 1946, when women in Italy first had the right to vote.

But the story reflects contemporary concerns among Italian audiences about women’s safety.

According to the most current statistics, 120 women will be killed in Italy in 2023. This is equivalent to one woman every three days.

It is stated that more than 50 percent of these women were killed by their partners or ex-partners, and a quarter of them were killed by their children (89 percent of them were boys).

The issue of femicide in Italy broke out in November 2023, a few weeks after the film was released.

Allegations that a 22-year-old university student named Giulia Cecchettin was killed by her ex-boyfriend, who is still awaiting trial, led to mass protests in the country. Thousands of people attended Cecchettin’s funeral.

Saying that femicide is “unfortunately a very, very current issue in Italy,” Cortellesi states that the film tries to explore a cultural mentality that he argues has “continued for thousands of years.”

Crimes called “crimes of passion” have been punishable in Italy since 1981.

In July 2023, it made headlines around the world when a school guard was acquitted of harassing a 17-year-old female student because the sexual assault lasted less than 10 seconds.

The phrase “brief harassment” has become a trend on Instagram and TikTok in Italy, along with the hashtag #10secondi.

Cortellesi shares that the theme of violence against women has been a part of his acting as well as his scripts for years, but he has not experienced it personally.

“I wanted to make a contemporary film set in the past, to compare what has changed and what has remained the same,” Cortellesi continues.

“We may now have some rights and guarantees as women, but what has not changed in society is the mentality that distorts love and turns it into an act of possession. That is why we need a better education system.”

C’è Ancora Domani may be a film that deals with difficult topics, but Cortellesi says he uses humor to help viewers relate to the film.

“I have used the same language in the scripts I have written in the past,” Cortellesi explains, “This is not comedy, but the use of comedic language to talk about very serious themes.”

Cortellesi also states that 45 percent of the audience in Italy is male, which he describes as “a great happiness.”

“This is by no means a film against Italian men, but an invitation to share and walk together on the same path in life. I didn’t want to alienate men from watching the film and I didn’t want them to think I was pointing an accusing finger at them,” says Cortellesi.