Dry

Dry (Siccità, 2022) is Paolo Virzì's tragicomic ensemble drama, available to watch online on iFILM. It hasn't rained in Rome for three years. The Tiber has run to mud, water comes by ration, and the rules that held the city together crack along with the parched pavement.

A sprawling cast of Romans drifts through the drought, their lives quietly wired into a single design — a debtor freshly escaped from prison, a fading actress, an overwhelmed doctor, a cab driver, a TV host, a broke aristocrat, each chasing some private deliverance. Silvio Orlando, Monica Bellucci, Valerio Mastandrea and Claudia Pandolfi carry the chorus.

This is no disaster movie. Virzì turns the dying capital into a sharp fable about thirst, vanity and the small cruelties people commit once the taps run out — funny one minute, uneasy the next. Stream Dry (2022) online on iFILM.