cinematography
Gianluca Rocco Palma
editing
Chiara Vullo
music
Tóti Guðnason

sound
Francesco Liotard
Mirko Perri
Giulio Previ
production design
Eugenia F. Di Napoli
costumes
Antonella Cannarozzi

cast
Valeria Golino (Gioia)
Saul Nanni (Alessio)
Jasmine Trinca (Carla)
Francesco Colella (Cosimo)
Betti Pedrazzi (Gisella)

productions
HT Film
Indigo Film
Vision Distribution
producers
Viola Prestieri
Nicola Giuliano
in collaboration with
Sky
with the support of
Fondo per lo Sviluppo degli Investimenti per il Cinema e l’Audiovisivo del Ministero della Cultura
Film Commission Torino Piemonte

world sales
Vision Distribution
www.visiondistribution.it
info@visiondistribution.it

Italian distribution
Vision Distribution
www.visiondistribution.it
info@visiondistribution.it

international press office
Alessandro Caccamo
alessandro.caccamo.cons@visiondistribution.it
Marco Rizzetto
marco.rizzetto@visiondistribution.it

Italian press office
Fosforo
www.fosforopress.com
Manuela Cavallari
manuela.cavallari@fosforopress.com
Giulia Santaroni
giulia.santaroni@fosforopress.com

Vision Distribution
Marinella Di Rosa
marinella.dirosa@visiondistribution.it

Gioia is a high school teacher who has never known any other love than the oppressive bond with her own parents, with whom she still lives. One of the students at her school, Alessio, is cashing in on his own body to make a couple of hundred euros to help his mother, a cashier in a supermarket. The relationship that dawns between Gioia and Alessio is forbidden fruit, fragile yet, inexplicably, one they can’t do without. Still, Alessio’s desire to improve his social standing is a silent killer that prevents him from ultimately accepting Gioia’s surprising affection for him. He goes and destroys it all, cancelling the only person who has ever loved him.

2025 La Gioia
2023 Lucio Amelio (doc)
2020 Fortuna
2010 Napoli 24 (doc, collective film)

“When Alessio bursts on the scene and into Gioia’s quiet existence – the only life she knows is from reading books, and Flaubert is her guide to love – a collision is inevitable and irreversible. Gioia and Alessio are two fictional characters reinvented for the screen who embody the sense of alienation that characterizes the present day. All around them, desperate, petty figures hardened by their ruthlessly provincial lives. The feeling we get is of an abandon, a cupio dissolvi, a toxic yearning for self-destruction that poisons their existences. Gioia’s own sacrifice – her feelings too pure for her to conform to a cynical world – marks the final failure of redemption from evil for he who has committed evil.”
(Nicolangelo Gelormini)

Nicolangelo Gelormini is a director, screenwriter, and editor born in Naples. After getting one degree in architecture, he got another at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. In 2010, he directed the episode My madre for the anthology film Napoli 24, which premiered at Torino. In 2020, he wrote, directed, and edited his first feature film, Fortuna, starring Valeria Golino and selected for the Rome Film Fest competition lineup. His documentary Lucio Amelio premiered at the same festival in 2023; this film about a legendary art dealer in Naples would earn him a Special Silver Ribbon. The following year, Gelormini directed an episode of the mini-series L’arte della gioia, based on the novel by Goliarda Sapienza of the same name, which premiered at Cannes and was released in Italy in 2025. La Gioia was a joint winner of the 2021 Franco Solinas Award for Best Screenplay and is based on the play by Giuliano Scarpinato and Gioia Salvatori, Se non sporca il mio pavimento.