Friendship, memory and buried resentment meet against the immense volcanic landscape of Sicily in Irene Dionisio’s IDDA, a second narrative feature that premiered in the Platform Competition at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival.
Starring Tecla Insolia and Romana Maggiora Vergano, IDDA follows two childhood friends who reunite in their thirties to pursue a dream they once shared: reaching the summit of Mount Etna. What begins as a journey through one of Italy’s most striking landscapes gradually becomes an emotionally charged confrontation with the past.
The film has also secured an Italian distribution deal with FilmClub Distribuzione, with Rai Cinema International Distribution handling international sales.
Two Friends Return to a Shared Dream
Adele and Sofia have known each other since childhood, but adulthood has taken them in different directions. When they reunite, they decide to complete an old dream by climbing Mount Etna together.
The journey, however, does not unfold as planned.
Something unresolved exists between them, and the physical challenge of climbing the volcano gradually exposes the emotional distance that has developed over the years. A bitter confrontation forces old wounds and buried secrets into the open, ultimately separating the two women just as the volcano begins to tremble.
Adele continues alone, haunted by the thought that she should have turned back — that she should have remained beside Sofia and reached the crater together.
The mountain becomes inseparable from their relationship.
Mount Etna as a Living Presence
For Dionisio, Etna is more than a spectacular location. The filmmaker describes the volcano as a living presence that reflects the instability and intensity of Adele and Sofia’s bond.
That idea gives IDDA its distinctive dramatic shape.
As the landscape changes around the women, so does their understanding of one another. The climb becomes both physical and emotional: every step toward the summit also brings them closer to memories, tensions and questions about the future that have remained unresolved.
Rather than using nature simply as a backdrop, Dionisio makes the landscape part of the film’s emotional vocabulary.
The immense scale of the volcano contrasts with the intimate conflict between two people who have shared most of their lives. Their friendship may be deeply rooted, but it is not immune to time, distance or change.
Tecla Insolia and Romana Maggiora Vergano
The film brings together two of Italy’s emerging actresses for its central roles.
Tecla Insolia, a 2026 Berlinale European Shooting Star, won the David di Donatello Award for Best Actress for Valeria Golino’s The Art of Joy. Her other credits include Francesco Costabile’s Familia, which premiered at Venice and was selected as Italy’s submission for the Best International Feature Oscar, as well as Damiano Michieletto’s Spring.
Romana Maggiora Vergano gained international attention through Paola Cortellesi’s acclaimed There’s Still Tomorrow. Her credits also include Francesca Comencini’s The Time It Takes, Paolo Strippoli’s The Holy Boy, Roland Emmerich’s Those About to Die and Marco Bellocchio’s Portobello.
Together, they carry a film whose drama depends on the subtle shifts between familiarity and alienation. Adele and Sofia know each other’s histories, yet their reunion reveals how little certainty can remain between two people after years apart.
Irene Dionisio’s Move Into Narrative Cinema
IDDA marks another stage in Dionisio’s development as a filmmaker.
She emerged from Italy’s documentary and visual-arts scenes before moving into narrative cinema. Her feature documentary Shores received the Solinas Prize, France’s SCAM Prize and the Jury Prize at Tehran’s Cinema Verité.
Her first narrative feature, Pawn Street, premiered at Venice Critics’ Week and received nominations for the David di Donatello and Globo d’Oro awards for Best Debut, while Dionisio won the Silver Ribbon for Best Screenplay.
Her visual installations have been exhibited internationally, including at Venice’s Palazzo Grassi and OCAT Shanghai. She has also served as artistic director of Turin’s LGBTQI film festival Lovers for the National Museum of Cinema.
That background helps explain the observational quality of IDDA, where landscape, movement and human behaviour carry as much significance as dialogue.
A Story About Friendship, Change and Belonging
Dionisio describes IDDA as a film about the fragile, intimate space between two people who have known each other for most of their lives.
That space becomes increasingly difficult to navigate as Adele and Sofia confront different ideas about their futures and the unresolved emotions that have accumulated between them.
The film’s emotional questions are therefore larger than the immediate conflict. What does it mean to maintain a friendship as people change? Can a bond formed in childhood survive the realities of adulthood? And how much of another person can we truly understand, even after knowing them for decades?
The journey across Etna becomes a way of asking those questions without reducing the relationship to a simple break or reconciliation.
An Italian Film With an International Journey
Produced by Kino Produzioni’s Giovanni Pompili, with Isabella Weber serving as delegate producer, IDDA brings together a significant international creative team. The production involves Rai Cinema, Andromeda Film, EDI Effetti Digitali Italiani and Wise Pictures.
The creative team includes cinematographer Gergely Pohárnok, editor Aline Hervé, production designer Rachele Meliadò, costume designer Andrea Cavalletto and sound designer Riccardo Alfano. The score was composed by Matteo Marini and Gabriele Concas of The Sweet Life Society, with Peter Miyakawa.
The film runs 89 minutes, is an Italian production from 2026 and is presented in Italian with English subtitles.
Following its TIFF premiere, FilmClub Distribuzione acquired Italian distribution rights, while Rai Cinema International Distribution had already secured sales in Bulgaria and Brazil and planned to present the film to buyers at TIFF: The Market.
When the Mountain Holds the Memory
At its core, IDDA is a story about two women confronting the distance between who they once were and who they have become.
The mountain gives that emotional journey a physical form. It is enormous, unpredictable and constantly shifting, much like the friendship at the centre of the film.
As Adele continues toward the crater alone, she carries more than the physical exhaustion of the climb. She carries the memory of a friendship, the consequences of what was left unsaid and the lingering possibility that some moments cannot be reclaimed.
With IDDA, Irene Dionisio transforms a journey up Mount Etna into an intimate meditation on friendship, belonging, change and the difficult process of understanding the people we thought we knew best.
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