Anna Foglietta's directorial debut, "A Common Story," screened in the Orizzonti sidebar at the Venice Film Festival and impresses through what its central couple leave unsaid, offering a rare alternative to the shouting-match relationship dramas that dominate the genre. Starring Alba Rohrwacher and Guido Caprino, the film examines a marriage strained by an inability to name or share emotional turmoil, with the actor-turned-filmmaker's understanding of silence proving more affecting than confrontation.

The story follows Erika (Rohrwacher), a supermarket cashier nearing 45, and Mauro (Caprino), a construction worker, after they drop their daughter Irene off at university, the first in the family to pursue higher education. Left adrift by empty-nest syndrome and lacking the vocabulary to process her sense of lost purpose, Erika spirals into an unarticulated depression that Mauro, further undermined by his overbearing father, is unable to comprehend or fix, culminating in a raw, escalating car-park argument shot with minimal cuts by cinematographer Andrea Benjamin Manenti.