On April 13th, as soon as it opened in theaters, I rushed to see "A Year of School," encouraged by the rave reviews on every film website, following the excitement surrounding the film's premiere at the 72nd Venice Film Festival. There were only five of us at the premiere, three of whom were retirees who had never been to Trieste. Movie theaters risk suffering the same fate as newsstands.

The film, set in 2007 and funded by the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, is, in my opinion, very well crafted by Laura Samani, a true Triestine director who knows her craft. The soundtrack is beautiful, all made In Friuli Venezia Giulia, folk songs from Trieste, Prozac, and Elisa. Dialogues in Triestine dialect, English, and a little Swedish (the language of the female protagonist), with subtitles.

Throughout the film, a love for Trieste shines through, but all that remains of Stuparich is the title and the names of the three Triestine "mules." All the actors are excellent, including the beautiful Fred, a Swedish girl who arrives in Trieste with her "headhunter" father, charged with laying off redundancies from the former Grandi Motori. Fred enrolls in the final year of an ITIS (technical institute for technical education) and ends up in an all-male class.

Of the hopes and tragic tensions depicted by Giani Stuparich on the eve of the Great War, only romantic skirmishes and a bit of bullying remain. What shines through, however, is the lively satisfaction of the people of Trieste at Slovenia's entry into the European Union, without any exams, thus avoiding the queues to travel to Istria, seen as a pleasant place within reach. Of Istria, for which Carlo and so many others died and Giani fought to the end, the film only preserves the Muggia carnival and, from the edge of the school, the dazzling, poignant view of Piran and the Savudrija lighthouse.

Eufemia Juliana Budicin