Emma Dante directs this adaptation of her widely acclaimed play: a melancholy and moving tale of five Sicilian sisters whose lives are forever changed by a trauma from their youth.

Maria, Pinuccia, Lia, Katia and Antonella are orphans struggling to raise themselves in their dilapidated Palermo apartment, where they carry on their parents’ business of renting out family-bred doves for use at weddings and birthdays. One hot summer’s day, they sneak in to a beach resort, and their adventuring has devastating results – unthreading their tight bond and tainting everything that comes afterwards.

Dante’s second feature is a masterpiece of mood and feeling, deeply empathetic and sensitive to its female characters whom we meet first during the exuberance of youth, then revisit as resentful adults and in regretful old age. Twelve actors play five characters between them, beautifully realising three distinct stages of womanhood and offering a fully formed portrayal each time. From Palermo’s streets, to the siblings’ sparse flat, to the distances that form in their hearts, The Macaluso Sisters traces a bittersweet story of family bonds, loss and living on.

“Deeply poignant … Dante sets a firm seal upon her cross-disciplinary emergence as a director of unusually vivid empathy … An exceptionally confident film.” – Variety