‘Mosquitoes’ Locarno Review: Three Girls, One Tumultuous Summer

This colorful coming-of-age tale, shifting from lighthearted to dramatic, unfolds in 1997 and follows the misadventures of three girls—two sisters and a friend—over the course of an intense summer in a suburb of Ferrara, Italy. With a pop aesthetic, an almost square screen format, and a restless, constantly moving camera, Le Bambine (translated into English as Mosquitoes, for reasons revealed in the film) draws on the lives of its directors, sisters Valentina and Nicole Bertani, and their own experiences from that stage of life.

The sisters in the film are Azzurra (Agnese Scazza) and Marta (Petra Scheggia), aged ten and nine, with a nurse for a mother and a father who never speaks and spends the day smoking—a curious, Amélie-like quirk the film sometimes embraces. When their parents are at work, they’re left in the care of Carletto (Milutin Dapčević), a gay babysitter at a time when such a thing was rarely seen in Italy. The girls pass their summer carefree, pulling pranks—their main early concern is checking the poop of their dog, who swallowed a glass eye—and growing bored until something new enters their lives that will change them profoundly.

Parallel to the sisters’ story, the film introduces Linda (Mia Ferricelli), a girl living in Switzerland with her young, free-spirited mother, Eva (Clara Tramontano), in the home of her wealthy grandmother. Eva decides to move them into another family house in Ferrara, where Linda meets the sisters and the three quickly become inseparable—sometimes accompanied by Carletto, sometimes getting involved in the lives of their neighbors, including an adopted girl raised by an apparently religious couple, and a pair of adult twins with a disability. Early on, they also spend much of their time with Eva, who prefers to act like one of the girls.

But things take a darker turn, especially in Eva’s life. The arrival of certain men hints—always from the limited perspective of the children—that she has entered a downward spiral Linda doesn’t know how to stop. In those moments, her friends become a lifeline, offering support and comfort. Together, often without much adult supervision, the girls roam the town, charging ahead recklessly (particularly Linda and Azzurra; Marta is more reserved) and inevitably getting into trouble.

Aside from a few moments when the film veers into music video or ad-like territory, Mosquitoes is a beautiful and ultimately moving work. Through the curious, imaginative eyes of its young protagonists, it touches on serious issues: troubled parenting, broken families, queerness, homophobia, selfishness—and also the solidarity that can emerge in small communities clinging to the past while tentatively navigating a more confusing and ambiguous present. Imaginative, skillful, and marked by a few debut-film quirks (this is Valentina’s second, her first was a solo effort), Mosquitoes is a promising entry into a subgenre that will endure as long as filmmakers have personal stories worth telling.