Dir: Francesca Archibugi | Italy 2026
Carla Lonzi was never going to make a cosy biopic. The Italian art critic turned feminist firebrand spent her life kicking against patriarchy, convention and, eventually, the art world itself. Francesca Archibugi’s Carla Lonzi, A Feminist Story captures that combustible intelligence without sanding off all her contradictions.
Lonzi — co-founder of Rivolta Femminile and author of the incendiary Let’s Spit on Hegel — comes across as fiercely original, infuriatingly uncompromising and, at times, exhausting. The film’s greatest asset is its archive: photographs, recordings and testimony conjure a woman whose ideas about sex, power, motherhood and female identity still have plenty of bite.
Archibugi is clearly fascinated by her subject, sometimes too much so; the film occasionally feels more reverential than interrogative. But Lonzi herself keeps breaking through the polish. She was not interested in being liked — and this lively, intelligent portrait wisely doesn’t try too hard to make her likeable. A provocative feminist reboot for a woman who never needed one.
VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2026