The Postman

The Postman (Il Postino, 1994) is an Italian-Belgian-French drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Michael Radford and based on a novel by Chilean writer Antonio Skármeta. Massimo Troisi, the beloved Italian comedian who died the day after filming wrapped, plays the lead.

On a small Mediterranean island, the exiled Chilean poet Pablo Neruda — played by Philippe Noiret — has taken up residence. The local postman Mario, a mild-mannered man with no particular education, gets the job of delivering his mail. Slowly, the proximity to poetry begins to change him: he wants to understand metaphor, and more practically, he has fallen for a local girl named Beatrice whose family keeps her well away from men like him.

The film landed five Oscar nominations — rare for a foreign-language picture at the time — and claimed the prize for Best Original Score. It's a quiet film, often funny and quietly heartbreaking, about how language can open up a person's entire world. Stream The Postman (1994) online on iFILM.