Director: Alejandro Gómez Monteverde
New York City in 1889 was no place for a sickly Italian nun with no money and no political favors — which is exactly the starting point of Cabrini, the true story of a woman who built an empire of care out of nothing.
What is Cabrini about?
Cristiana Dell'Anna plays Francesca Cabrini, an immigrant arriving in a city that offers her fellow Italians little beyond disease, poverty, and prejudice. Rather than accept the limits placed on her by a hostile city government and her own fragile health, Cabrini sets out to change the fate of the neighborhood's most vulnerable children and families. Her plan requires convincing a skeptical, often openly hostile mayor to grant her the housing and medical resources she needs, all while her fluency in English and her physical strength both work against her. What follows is less a quiet story of charity than a determined campaign of persistence, negotiation, and sheer will, as Cabrini builds hospitals, orphanages, and schools that reshape how an entire city treats its poorest residents. Director Alejandro Gómez Monteverde frames her fight as both personal and civic, tracking how one person's refusal to be dismissed changed public health infrastructure for generations.
Cast & crew
Dell'Anna carries the film in the title role, playing Cabrini's transformation from an overlooked outsider into a formidable civic force. David Morse and John Lithgow appear as figures within the city's political establishment who first underestimate and then reckon with her, while Giancarlo Giannini, Romana Maggiora Vergano, and Federico Ielapi fill out the world she is fighting to protect.
Context & significance
Cabrini is a 2024 historical drama grounded in the real life of Francesca Xavier Cabrini, whose work in Gilded Age New York laid the foundation for hospitals and orphanages that outlasted her by decades. The film leans into the period's grit — tenement crowding, disease, and institutional indifference — to underline the scale of what she was up against.
Where & how to watch
Cabrini streams on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles available, part of a Farsi-first catalog built for the Iranian diaspora. The page can be read freely, and watching the film only requires signing in with a free K-Time account.