Ischia Global Fest 2026: LA GIOIA

Cinema Excelsior Hall 2

Free admission while seats are available.

10:45 PM – LA GIOIA by Nicolangelo Gelormini – 108 min

SYNOPSIS
La Gioia, directed by Nicolangelo Gelormini, tells the painful and complex love story between a fifty-year-old woman and a much younger man.
Gioia (Valeria Golino) is a high school teacher who has never experienced love beyond the suffocating affection of her parents, with whom she still lives. Among her students is Alessio (Saul Nanni), a young man who uses his body to earn a few hundred euros and help support his mother (Jasmine Trinca), a supermarket cashier.
A forbidden relationship develops between Gioia and Alessio—fragile, unexpected, and, in ways neither can fully explain, deeply necessary to them both.
Yet Alessio's longing for social and personal redemption becomes a silent poison, preventing him from surrendering to Gioia's disarming tenderness. In the end, he destroys everything, erasing the only person who has ever truly loved him.