Vittoria
Alessandro Cassigoli • Casey Kauffman
Drama • 2024 • 1h 20m
2026 • 121 min
The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd
This movie was screened on
Synopsis
Karen, a literature teacher trapped in an impossible marriage, agrees to teach a creative writing course in a maximum-security prison. Here she meets Wilson Shedd, an inmate convicted of extremely serious crimes. An unexpected bond develops between them, one destined to transform their lives. For Wilson, Karen becomes a reason to keep living; for her, the encounter represents a way out of her circumstances, but also the beginning of a relationship that will lead her to cross increasingly dangerous moral boundaries. Through a fragmented narrative that gradually pieces together the events, the film intertwines a story of love and despair with a reflection on individual responsibility, imprisonment, and the death penalty.
Review
4 min read
Reviewed by Beatrice
· 21. October 2026
Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.
Albert Camus
The screenplay and editing, built around constant shifts back and forth in time, initially disorient the viewer before precisely piecing together the events. The structure is not merely a stylistic exercise: it continually changes our perception of the characters, preventing judgment from preceding understanding.
At the heart of the film lies an essential question: what drives us to live when existence seems to have lost all meaning? Wilson finds in Karen a reason to keep existing. Their relationship is born out of the despair and violence they have both experienced, but it leads to profoundly different consequences. He, responsible for extremely serious crimes, sees in the woman a possible source of meaning; she sees their encounter as an opportunity to escape her circumstances. Their mutual need draws them closer, until the relationship turns into complicity.
The film thus avoids the easy opposition between victim and perpetrator. Recognising the humanity of a criminal does not mean absolving him, just as understanding a victim's suffering does not justify every subsequent choice. The relationship between Karen and Wilson develops precisely in this ambiguous territory, where the desire to give meaning to one's life can become a liberating force, but also an alibi for crossing every boundary.
Imprisonment is the ideal setting for this reflection. Prison deprives inmates of their physical freedom, but it also brings other forms of confinement into view: domestic violence, the inability to imagine a future, and permanent identification with one's past. Teaching creative writing introduces, within this space, the possibility of telling one's story differently.
It is above all in its reflection on the death penalty that the film achieves its greatest ethical force. Wilson is guilty, and that is precisely what makes the question more complex: does responsibility for a crime authorise society to dispose of the life of the person who committed it? The sentence may be necessary, but execution raises a further problem: if justice claims to distinguish itself from revenge, on what principle can it base the right to kill...
If Glazer, in The Zone of Interest, depicts the horror of extermination against the backdrop of the reassuring everyday life of those who administer it, The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd shifts the problem to the realm of justice: to what extent can the legitimacy of a system make the violence it exercises acceptable? In both films, the question concerns not only those who commit evil, but also the mechanisms that allow it to be accepted, administered, or considered necessary. The death penalty takes this contradiction to its extreme: how can a society that condemns murder claim the right to kill in the name of the law? Two very different films, yet united by an uncomfortable idea: when violence is recognised as legitimate, do we perhaps stop perceiving it as such?
The film neither absolves Wilson nor diminishes the gravity of his actions. Rather, it challenges the assumption that death can resolve what violence has destroyed. Human dignity cannot depend exclusively on the moral conduct of the person who possesses it; otherwise, the right to life becomes a revocable concession.
Within this framework comes one of Wilson's particularly significant lines, when he states that he has never believed in good or evil, but in stupidity. It is a cynical observation that shifts the discussion from morality to the human inability to understand the consequences of one's actions. Stupidity, after all, does not necessarily require malice: it can accompany those who act convinced they are in the right, those who obey without questioning, and those who mistake the certainty of their convictions for proof of their validity. Sometimes, it is precisely this inability to think that makes violence even more dangerous.
The central question, however, remains the need to find a reason to live. The film does not idealise love as a universal solution: the bond between Karen and Wilson offers them the possibility of finding meaning, but does not free them from the contradictions and consequences of their choices. Having a purpose can become a source of vital energy; it can also turn into an absolute justification if everything is sacrificed to preserve it.
It is this ambivalence that makes the film compelling. Existence needs meaning, but no individual meaning erases one's responsibility towards others. With a sophisticated and rigorous narrative structure, The Life and Deaths of Wilson Sheddintertwines love, violence, and justice in a reflection on the fragility of moral certainties. The question it leaves open is not whether a human being can change, but whether the need to give meaning to one's life can ever justify what one is willing to do to find it.
Evil is more often done by people who have never made up their minds to be either good or evil.
Hannah Arendt
This movie was in the official competition of Rome Film Fest
