Venice in the years right after World War II sets the stage for Across the River and Into the Trees, a 2023 drama that follows a wounded American army officer confronting difficult news about his own health.

What is Across the River and Into the Trees about?

Colonel Richard Cantwell, played by Liev Schreiber, has survived the war but not unscathed, and the film opens on him receiving news of his declining health with a kind of flat, guarded calm. Rather than dramatizing that reaction, the story lets Venice itself, its canals and its quiet after-war atmosphere, carry much of the emotional weight, with Matilda De Angelis, Josh Hutcherson, Laura Morante, Danny Huston, Giulio Berruti, Enzo Cilenti and Sabrina Impacciatore filling out a world of soldiers, locals and old acquaintances around him. It's a character study more than a war film, using the aftermath of conflict as a backdrop for one man reckoning with what's left of his life.

About the cast

Liev Schreiber carries the film as Colonel Cantwell, playing a soldier whose composure is doing a lot of work to hide what he's actually facing. Matilda De Angelis, Josh Hutcherson, Laura Morante, Danny Huston, Giulio Berruti, Enzo Cilenti and Sabrina Impacciatore fill out the ensemble, giving director Paula Ortiz's postwar Venice a lived-in population of soldiers and civilians rather than a single-hander stage.

Context & significance

Paula Ortiz directs a story set in the immediate aftermath of World War II, a period the film treats less as history to be explained and more as atmosphere, a city and a continent still absorbing what just happened. The genre mix of drama, romance and war signals a film more interested in interior reckoning than battlefield spectacle, and its 2023 catalogue year places it among a wave of postwar-set dramas built around a single central performance. Viewers drawn to slow, character-first stories set against historical backdrops are the natural audience.

Watching Across the River and Into the Trees on Ktime

Across the River and Into the Trees is available to watch on K-Time with a free account login, and the platform carries it with Persian dub and Persian subtitle options, letting viewers choose a Farsi voice track or the original English dialogue with Farsi subtitles. K-Time's Farsi-first interface, built for the Iranian diaspora, makes a quieter postwar drama like this as easy to find as any louder catalogue title.