Dir: Ferzan Özpetek | Italy, Drama 2025
What starts with a delicious al fresco lunch between a group of Italian actors – who are all female- soon becomes a contemplative script reading – the ‘film within a film’s’ focus’ is the soft power of women and their elegant creative capabilities in 1970s Rome. But that’s not all, as we soon find out in Ferzan Özpetek’s latest that unfolds as a highly feminine fulsome “love letter to women” and the art of cinema costume design and the intrigues that surround their collaboration.
Starring Luisa Ranieri and Jasmine Trinca, the film centres on two dressmaker sisters at the helm of a prestigious Roman fashion house as they attempt to fulfil an intricate commission for an Oscar-winning costume designer.
Bathed in a rich and vibrant aesthetic glow and with its languorous score Diamanti was understandably a major box-office hit in Italy, and glows with its, often spirited, emotional atmosphere and gorgeous turns from Trinca and Ranieri. But its episodic narrative structure juggling too many characters and subplots dilutes the dramatic thrust and fragments a story that has the power and conviction to stand boldly on its own.
IN UK CINEMAS from 17 April 2026