Rome has gone three years without rain, and Paolo Virzì's 2022 ensemble film Dry watches what a city does to itself once the water stops.
What is Dry about?
The drought has reordered daily life in Rome, turning ordinary habits and long-standing rules into something fragile and contested. Rather than following one protagonist, the film moves through a chorus of Roman residents, young and old, comfortable and struggling, some finding advantage in the crisis while others are simply trying to get through it. Their paths cross and overlap across the parched city, each pursuing a different kind of relief from the same drying-out world. Virzì uses the drought less as a disaster-movie device and more as a lens on the city itself, letting the shortage expose who people already were before the water disappeared. The film mixes drama and comedy with a science-fiction premise, giving it a tone that shifts between the absurd and the painfully recognizable.
About the cast
The cast includes Silvio Orlando, Valerio Mastandrea, Elena Lietti, Tommaso Ragno, Claudia Pandolfi, Vinicio Marchioni, Monica Bellucci, and Diego Ribon, an ensemble spread across the film's many intersecting storylines rather than concentrated on a single lead.
Context & significance
Made in Italy, Dry sits across drama, comedy, and science fiction, a combination that lets Virzì treat a speculative premise with the texture of realist social observation. The multi-character structure means the film builds its picture of the city through accumulation rather than a single throughline, closer in spirit to an ensemble mosaic than a conventional plot-driven story. At 124 minutes, it reads as a considered, well-received entry in Virzì's body of socially minded filmmaking, one that found a receptive audience at home without ever chasing a mass one.
Watching Dry on Ktime
K-Time streams Dry with a Persian dub, so Farsi-speaking viewers can watch without relying on subtitles for this title. Access requires a free K-Time account login, while the film's page and this write-up can be read without signing in. The platform's interface is built entirely for Persian-speaking audiences across the diaspora.