The Last One for the Road: Sossai Enters the Slovenian Cinema Landscape

The film The Last One for the Road (Le città di pianura, 2025) by director Francesco Sossai carries within it the rhythm of landscapes and the memory of places. Sossai, one of the most distinctive voices of the younger generation of Italian cinema, began the international journey of his feature film at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is now beginning its path through Slovenian cinemas: distributed by Demiurg, it will first be hosted by Kinodvor in the final days of May, marking its first encounter with Slovenian audiences, before screening in June at the Kino Otok film festival.

Yet the film’s first encounter with Slovenia had already taken place earlier. It was at the Kulturni dom Nova Gorica, during the cross-border film festival Tribute to a Vision, that the film celebrated its Slovenian premiere. As the opening film, it filled the theatre with a restrained whisper of images and emotions. The evening was introduced by GO! 2025 programme director Stojan Pelko. In the summer of 2025, Sossai also shot his short film In the Clouds of Memory in Gorizia as part of the omnibus project Our Daily Cinema — a small yet meaningful fragment of creative dialogue with film history and actress Nora Gregor.

The film was selected by numerous prestigious international festivals: in addition to the Cannes Film Festival, it was also featured at the Busan International Film Festival (Flash Forward), Filmfest München (CineCoPro Competition), New York Film Festival (Main Slate), Toronto International Film Festival (Centrepiece), and Vancouver International Film Festival (Panorama). The film also resonated triumphantly at home in Italy. At the David di Donatello awards ceremony, it received no fewer than eight statuettes, including Best Film and Best Director. Yet in this case, numbers say less than the feeling the film leaves behind: this is a work that does not impose itself, but rather slowly settles within the viewer.