I Want Her Dead
Gianluca Matarrese / Italy / 2025 / 85 min
In a Calabrian village, peace is threatened by a long-standing family feud between two sisters-in-law. A tragicomic portrait of a tiny town where the art of the melodrama is alive and well.
Bastard, liar, bitch, idiot. These are the words Imma and Luisa use to address each other. They hate each other with the kind of passion that only Italian women in films can muster – and as if that weren’t enough, they are both family and neighbours. When one hangs freshly washed curtains to dry on the balcony, the other cuts them to shreds from the floor below.
The feud between the two sisters-in-law shakes not only the family, but the entire village: Only 70 people live there, and they are all related in some way or another. In the end, three wise old ladies have to step in as mediators in a desperate attempt to heal a conflict with deep roots. Filmmaker Gianluca Matarrese draws on a ten-year conflict in his own family and has created a tragicomic, intense and emotional portrait of a southern Italian family on the brink of collapse.