In four seasons nature completes its cycle. A girl can become a woman. A belly can swell and become a creature. One can lose the path that once led safely home, or cross seas toward unknown lands. In four seasons one can die and be reborn.

Vermiglio tells of the final year of the Second World War in a large family and how, with the arrival of a refugee soldier, by a paradox of fate they lose their peace at the very moment the world regains its own.

Italy, Drama,115minutes

REVIEW | TRAILER

Under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, nothing will stop his mandatory birthday celebrations, including choosing a child from each school class across the land to bake a cake in his honour. Despite Lamia’s best efforts to avoid it, knowing how difficult it will be to source the ingredients, she is picked among her peers to produce the cake, which she must do, or face the consequences.  

Lamia’s quest for the ingredients allows us explore the gamut of Iraqi society, painting a moving portrait of the resilience of a people caught between authoritarian rule and injudicious American imperialism.

It was the first Iraqi film to feature at the Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered in the Directors' Fortnight and won both the section's Audience Award, as well as the festival's prestigious Camera d'Or.

Highly recommended