Strangeness sends the playwright Luigi Pirandello back to his native Sicily in 1920 and lets a chance meeting reshape the rest of the film.
What is Strangeness about?
Set in Sicily in 1920, the story follows Pirandello during a visit home, where he crosses paths with two actors, Onofrio Principato and Sebastiano Vella, in the middle of rehearsing a new production with a troupe of amateur performers. That encounter becomes the hinge the rest of the film turns on, pulling a working writer's routine trip into something closer to a study of performance itself -- of amateurs testing themselves against a professional's gaze, and a professional finding something unexpected in a rehearsal room he never meant to enter. The film keeps its scale small and its setting close to the ground, favoring conversation and observation over spectacle.
About the cast
Toni Servillo anchors the film, with Salvatore Ficarra and Valentino Picone playing the two actors at the center of the rehearsal-room plot, and Giulia Ando, Rosario Lisma, Donatella Finocchiaro, and Aurora Quattrocchi filling out the surrounding cast. Ficarra and Picone are a well-known comic duo in Italian film, and pairing them opposite Servillo's more restrained register is a large part of what gives the film its particular tone.
Context & significance
Directed by Roberto Ando and released in 2022, Strangeness sits at the intersection of comedy and drama rather than committing fully to either, using Pirandello -- a writer whose own work returned obsessively to questions of identity and performance -- as a way into a story about actors rehearsing for an audience that has not yet arrived. Italian cinema has a long tradition of literary figures appearing as characters in period pieces, and the film leans into that tradition rather than treating Pirandello as a distant historical name.
Watching Strangeness on Ktime
Strangeness streams on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles available, so Farsi-speaking viewers can choose either option. Access requires only a free K-Time account, with the film's own page readable before signing in, and the platform's Farsi-language interface built for Persian speakers living outside Iran.