Director: Alessandro Genovesi
An Italian foster home becomes the setting for a slow-burning, emotionally charged romance in The Tearsmith, Alessandro Genovesi's 2024 drama adapted from a widely read young-adult novel.
What is The Tearsmith about?
Nica has spent years learning to keep her guard up inside the walls of a group home, where affection is rare and stability is rarer still. Everything shifts when she is placed alongside Rigel, a boy who has built his own defenses out of silence and control. The two are pushed together by circumstance long before either wants anything to do with the other, and what starts as friction slowly, uneasily, turns into something neither can name at first. Their bond forms in stolen moments away from watchful staff and skeptical peers, shaped by past wounds neither is ready to talk about openly. The film follows their halting attempts to trust another person after years of learning not to, set against the quiet, often unglamorous rhythm of institutional life.
Cast & crew
Caterina Ferioli and Simone Baldasseroni play Nica and Rigel with a guarded, tentative energy that carries much of the film's emotional weight. Sabrina Paravicini, Alessandro Bedetti, and Roberta Rovelli fill out the surrounding cast of caretakers and fellow residents who shape the pair's daily world.
Context & significance
Director Alessandro Genovesi adapts a bestselling Italian novel that built a devoted readership before reaching the screen, and the film leans into the source material's intense, interior focus on two damaged young people finding each other. Released in 2024, it arrived already carrying an established fan base eager to see the central relationship brought to life.
Where & how to watch
The Tearsmith is available on K-Time with a free account login, part of a catalog built with a Farsi-friendly interface for Persian-speaking viewers. The page describing the film can be read without signing in; only streaming it requires a login.