8 September 2026
Like the monkey in Aesop’s fable that loves one offspring at the expense of the other, Dario finds himself torn between his real son and an ‘ideal’ one. Despite his devotion to his disabled child, whom he cares for with endless love and attention, the bond with his teenage nephew introduces a slippery temptation: finding in the boy the son he always wished for. Stepping into the role of the father he could never be, Dario sets off a game of projections bound to shatter his inner balance and engulf the entire family.
Tommaso Landucci (Lucca, 1987) trained at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia before working alongside directors such as Claudio Giovannesi and Luca Guadagnino. Following the documentary Caveman – The Hidden Giant (2021), presented at Venice’s Giornate degli Autori, he makes his feature narrative debut with I figli della scimmia, competing in the Orizzonti section. The film’s screenplay, co-written with Damiano Femert, has won the 2021 Premio Solinas and the Grand Prize at the Sam Spiegel Lab.
