Twice Born

Twice Born (Venuto al mondo, 2012) is Sergio Castellitto's wartime romance starring Penélope Cruz, available to watch online on iFILM. Years after the siege of Sarajevo, an Italian woman named Gemma takes her teenage son back to the city where his father died, and buried grief surfaces.

Gemma (Cruz) flies into the Bosnian capital with sixteen-year-old Pietro, meaning to finally tell him the truth about Diego, a Genoese photographer and the love of her life. Their mutual friend Gojko introduced them back in 1984, during the Winter Olympics, when the city was a celebration rather than a ruin. The film keeps splitting time in two: those carefree eighties against the blockade of the nineties, snipers picking off the streets, the simple wish to have a child turning into something desperate and nearly impossible. Emile Hirsch plays Diego, Adnan Hasković plays Gojko.

Castellitto adapted the novel by his wife, Margaret Mazzantini, and he doesn't shy from full-throttle melodrama: huge emotions, a hard late twist, war as the backdrop to one private tragedy. It's for viewers ready for an open, unashamedly tearful drama about motherhood and memory. Stream Twice Born (2012) online on iFILM.