The 2025 Italian Film Festival is underway at Palace Cinemas around Australia. Australian women have a leading role in it. So too does the ground-breaking Aussie movie Looking for Alibrandi, showcased as the closing night film in a special 4K restoration for its 25th anniversary year.
Among the must-see films in the program is the Aussie documentary Signorinella: Little Miss. In it, women who migrated from Italy to Australia before and after the Second World War relate their experiences. Their stories are fascinating, poignant, sometimes shocking and sometimes very funny.
Legs like liquorice
The eldest interviewee, Mildura resident Celestina Mammone, still looking fabulous at the age of 94, arrived in 1934 aged seven. Here she met her father for the first time. He’d emigrated to Australia in 1922, and she had been conceived when he returned to Italy for a short holiday in 1927.
The young Aussies gave her a hard time. “At school, they all laughed at me because my mum put black stockings on me – they called me Liquorice Legs.” She can chuckle about it now, but the teasing stung at the time. “I didn’t like my skin, I didn’t like my black hair, I didn’t like my name, I didn’t like anything!” she says. “I wanted to have ginger hair and freckles.”
Driving Miss Mary
Signorinella: Little Miss gets its title from Mary Marino, who arrived in 1934 aged eight, joining her father and his brothers, who had emigrated earlier to work on the cane fields in Innisfail. Things soured when Italy entered the Second World War in 1940 as an ally of Germany. Her father, uncles and other recent male Italian arrivals had to go internment camps. Life became very hard for the women who were left behind to fend for themselves.
“My mother, my grandmother and my auntie did most of the cane-cutting,” says Mary, who drove the cane to the mill. “I was 14 years old and driving without a licence, I was driving an eight-tonne truck! I tell you, I bumped into a few trees…” she giggles and chuckles. “So, I came to Australia as a child of eight and became a signorinella [young woman].”
Clueless men in need
After the Second World War, the economic conditions in Italy were dire, particularly for women. The Italian male immigrants in Australia were also doing it tough, it seems. As Aussie-Italian actress Greta Scacchi narrates in Signorinella: Little Miss, “There were many single men, but single women weren’t allowed to migrate, and without their mothers, the men didn’t have the life skills to look after themselves.”
The solution that was found seems bizarre in this day and age. The Italian Film Festival Director Elysia Zeccola takes up the story.
“Signorinella: Little Miss tells stories of women who were married by proxy (in their local town), waited a year for visas and paperwork and then boarded a boat for a six-week journey, leaving family and friends, to arrive on the opposite side of the world and meet a husband they had never met and start a life in a country where they didn’t speak the language. Their bravery is incredible!”
The film is directed by Shannon Swan, Angelo Pricolo and Jason McFadyen. It’s the follow-up to their documentary Lygon Street: Si Parla Italiano, which looked at Aussie-Italians’ life from an amusing male perspective.
Love finds a way
Carmella Rocca was one of the proxy brides. She arrived in 1957, aged 17. Originally, she had no desire or intention to go to Australia, but when she saw a photo of her potential proxy husband, “a feeling developed spontaneously”.
The proxy process was absurd, she says. “At the time, a proxy bride could not leave for Australia unless they were married by the Church. You had to get married in your town, and so your brother or a sponsor or a friend” stood in for the faraway groom. Carmella’s brother took on the role for her. It was
“There were many proxy marriages, but not many were successful,” she adds. Some men were devious in their choice of profile pics. Their young brides disembarked from their ships, expecting to be greeted by a handsome young prince, only to find a middle-aged frog! (My words, not Carmella’s.)
And how did Carmella’s proxy marriage turn out? “Me and Vincenzo have been married for 67 years,” she says with a contented smile.
World’s biggest Italian Film Festival
Elysia is the National Festival Director of Palace Cinemas and Palace Films, and this is her 26th year of organising what is now “the biggest festival of Italian cinema in the world, boasting over 90,000 admissions in the world and growing every year”.
She has Italian heritage herself, and having Signorinella: Little Miss on the 2025 festival program is one of her proudest moments. “It’s hard to put into words how much this means to me,” she says. “My parents were both migrants, so it does make me proud to share these stories and see the festival grow. Migrants created work, they opened businesses, they employed people, and they contributed enormously to this country – and they still do!”
Alibrandi still has what it takes
Looking For Alibrandi burst on the local film-making scene like a breath of fresh air in the year 2000, scooping all the major Australian Film Institute awards. Best Film, Best Actress (Pia Miranda), Best Supporting Actress (Greta Scacchi), Best Adapted Screenplay (Melina Marchetta, adapted from her own novel) and Best Film Editing.
“I was in high school in the 90s and I just loved this film!” says Elysia. “It resonated with me and so many people because many of us have felt like fish out of water, that we were different and didn’t quite belong. In this story, Josie, the Italian-Australian protagonist, represents every mixed-race Aussie kid trying to navigate high school and family issues and first romances to figure out who they really are.”
Looking For Alibrandi still resonates today. “It’s my favourite Australian film ever,” declares one of my Women’s Weekly colleagues who treats herself to a pampering “me time” solo screening at home every year around her birthday, glass of wine in hand. I’m looking forward to seeing it in all its restored 4K glory on closing night.
What to see at the Italian Film Festival
There are 31 films to enjoy at the 2025 Italian Film Festival. I have my own personal rating system, scribbling a Y, N or M (Yes, No, Maybe) on each film listed in the print version of the program I picked up at my local Palace Cinema. I also add AWW marks on films that I think Women’s Weekly readers will love. This year, practically every film is a Y and AWW winner. (I’m not sure about the five films in the gory Giallo genre retrospective, though The House With Laughing Windows could be fun.) Italian film-makers have a tremendous knack for bringing women’s stories to life.
Italy’s box office hit of the year, Somebody to Love (Italian title Follemente, which means madly or crazily), is a must. It had the festival opening night audience in stitches as it channelled a duo’s inner thoughts and voices on an awkward first date.
If fashion’s your thing, Diamonds/Diamanti ticks many boxes as it examines the lives, trials and tribulations of a team of seamstresses in a 1970s fashion house in Rome. Think laughter, tears, sibling rivalry, and hilarious clashes of egos between a film star diva anda top theatre actress being fitted out for their costumes. The biopic Gianni Versace – Emperor of Dreams is a definite Y and AWW too.
Spectacular armchair travelling
As The Australian Women’s Weekly Travel Editor, I take a special interest in the locations. The festival program conveniently maps them out: this year it covers 12 of Italy’s 20 regions, including the isles of Sicily and Sardinia.
“The whole festival is a journey from North to South,” Elysia says. “It might remind you of the holiday you dream to have or the lover you once knew. We want to transport you to another time and place.”
Elysia’s top pick for scenery is The Mountain Bride – Vermiglio, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2024 Venice Film Festival. “It’s stunningly set in Trentino-Alto Adige in the Italian Alps, bordering Austria and Switzerland, famous for its mountainous landscape, including the breathtaking Dolomites.”
2025 Italian Film Festival venues and dates
Palace Cinemas and its partner cinemas are the hosts in the following locations.
Canberra: 17 September – 15 October
Adelaide: 17 September – 14 October
Sydney: 18 September – 15 October
Melbourne: 19 September – 16 October
Ballarat: 20 September – 16 October
Brisbane: 24 September – 22 October
Byron Bay & Ballina: 25 September – 15 October
Perth: 25 September – 22 October
In most places, the festival will be prolonged with around a week of extra screenings by popular demand. For information and updates, visit italianfilmfestival.com.au
