01
The Wonders
Why this pick
Rohrwacher’s earlier rural fable shares the handmade naturalism, porous sense of time, and tender attention to people living at the edge of modern Italy.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE2018 2h 10m ITA
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
Happy as Lazzaro
Drama
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved Happy as Lazzaro, try these.
01
02
The Tale of King Crab
Why this pick
A rough-hewn folk legend that moves from an Italian village into mythic territory, balancing earthy detail, melancholy, and an uncanny openness to transformation.
03
The Milk of Sorrow
Why this pick
Its quiet, guileless protagonist and restrained magical-realist texture turn inherited trauma and social inequality into something intimate, strange, and compassionate.
04
The Turin Horse
Why this pick
For the elemental rural setting and patient observation of labor, deprivation, and ritual—though its austere, apocalyptic mood is far harsher than Rohrwacher’s warmth.
05
The White Ribbon
Why this pick
Another village chronicle where hierarchy and cruelty hide beneath old-world routines; its precise monochrome realism offers a colder, more ominous counterpart to Lazzaro’s innocence.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
Our curator needs a little longer. Please come back shortly.
No confident matches yet. Try our personal film finder.
01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
On an estate called Inviolata, isolated since 1977, 54 farmhands work on a tobacco farm in a sharecropping arrangement, where they are constantly in debt and thus unpaid. The farm is run by the notorious Alfonsina de Luna, "Queen of Cigarettes". Lazzaro is a worker on the farm who dutifully follows every command given to him by the marquis and the heads of the estate. Tancredi is the marquis, who befriends Lazzaro. Becoming disillusioned with the cycle of exploitation on the estate, Tancredi decides to defy Alfonsina, his mother, by faking his own kidnapping. Tancredi and Lazzaro set out in the wilderness and ditches, where they write a false ransom note with Lazzaro posing as the kidnapper. They imitate a wolf's howl to make contact with a wolf roaming the countryside; Tancredi also warmly suggests they could be half-brothers, since his father was a womanizer. Lazzaro takes the idea of their brotherhood seriously.
Showing saved details. Some information may be out of date.
02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Adriano Tardiolo
Lazzaro
Agnese Graziani
Antonia (young)
Luca Chikovani
Tancredi (young)
Alba Rohrwacher
Antonia
Sergi López
Ultimo
Natalino Balasso
Nicola
Tommaso Ragno
Tancredi
Nicoletta Braschi
Marchesa Alfonsina De Luna