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The Italian film C’è Ancora Domani (There’s still tomorrow) — set in Rome just after the second world war and shot entirely in black and white — opens with a man slapping his wife across the face just after she wakes and says “good morning”.

It goes on to portray a working class family plagued by quotidian domestic violence, a vexed mother-daughter relationship and acts of resistance large and small in an era when Italian women were considered family property — and so treated by the law.

Such trenchant fare may seem destined for the international art house circuit. Yet C’è Ancora Domani has been a stunning domestic box office hit, touching a nerve in a society currently up in arms over persistent machismo and violence against women by intimate partners.

Paola Cortellesi, who directed, co-wrote and starred in the film, wanted to make “a contemporary movie set in the past” to help her own young daughter understand Italian women’s struggle for rights and dignity. “Men still think of women as their own — a kind of possession,” she told me. 

Just days after the film’s release last autumn, university student Giulia Cecchettin, 22, was killed by her ex-boyfriend — a crime that galvanised Italian society. Her family publicly blamed her death on a culture that they said devalued women’s lives. 

At her funeral — broadcast live on national television — her father called for an end to “the terrible plague” of femicide in Italy, where, according to official statistics, 97 women were killed by current or former intimate partners, or other family members, last year. 

Amid the turmoil, ticket sales for C’è Ancora Domani — with its surprisingly uplifting ending — soared, surpassing the frothy Barbie to become Italy’s highest grossing film in 2023 — and one of its top 10 highest grossing films ever. Schools have arranged screenings, with more than 56,000 students on 300 campuses watching at one event, with the chance to question the director afterwards. “This is a moment of ferment,” Cortellesi says. “People are fed up with these terrible stories of women being killed.”

Much has changed in Italy — especially in law — since the era of the film’s story, when the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s view that women’s primary role was to have babies was widely shared.

In 1970, Italy legalised divorce, catching up with most western European countries in allowing women to escape unhappy or abusive marriages. In 1981, it scrapped the “honour crime” provisions of its penal code, under which men were given lenient punishments for killing unfaithful wives or other female relatives in “dishonourable relationships”, and men could avoid criminal prosecution for rape if they married their victims.

In 1996, Italy finally replaced its fascist-era rape law, which treated it as a crime against “public morality” rather than recognising women as injured parties.

But while the law has evolved, many Italian feminists argue that male attitudes have not kept pace. “What has not changed is the mentality. It’s a toxic, resistant mindset,” Cortellesi said. “Women are emancipated and some men naturally don’t accept this.”

Alessia Dulbecco, author of the book It’s Always Been Done This Way on gender education, says that Italian public attitudes are still “linked to the past”, when men were in firm control and violence was a socially acceptable and legal means of putting a feisty woman in her place. “A lot of men think that they are losing their privilege,” Dulbecco said. “They are frightened by these cultural changes.”

Women’s rights activists have been demanding mandatory emotional education in schools to combat retrograde stereotypes and equip young people with the values and skills for an era of greater equality. But Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing government prefers voluntary after-school programmes instead. 

For now, C’è Ancora Domani looks set to remain a rallying point for Italy’s unfinished gender revolution. 

“The rights of women are not eternal — you must keep vigilant and always be on the alert,” Cortellesi says. “My intention is that girls leave the theatre with the wish and desire to feel free.”

amy.kazmin@ft.com