Our take
Set in 1970s Italian countryside, this is a quirky movie that’s full of plot twists.
Lazzaro is a dedicated worker at a tobacco estate. His village has been indebted to a marquise and like everyone else, he works without a wage and in arduous conditions.
Lazzaro strikes a friendship with the son of the marquise, who, in an act of rebellion against his mother, decides to fake his own kidnapping. The two form an unlikely friendship in a story that mixes magical realism with social commentary.
The story
Purehearted teen Lazzaro is content living as a sharecropper in rural Italy, but an unlikely friendship with the marquise’s son will change his world.
Elsewhere
"Borrowing themes and tropes from such grand directorial forerunners as Visconti and Pasolini, Rohrwacher imaginatively maps the ills of modernity onto long-standing injustices."
— Richard Brody
Who picked it
Bilal Zouheir is the founder of A Good Movie to Watch. He is based in the US and a member of the Nevada Film Critics Society. He grew up in Morocco, where he learned English from watching movies. Bilal's work with A Good Movie to Watch is focused on offering an alternative to streaming algorithms, which are often used as commercial tools by streaming services.
"Alice Rohrwacher follows her beguiling The Wonders (2014) with the no less lyrical and even more fabulist Happy as Lazzaro."
— Amy Taubin