Maunga Cassino
2023 · 16m · New Zealand
Directed by Paolo Rotondo
Genres: drama, historical, war
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A Māori soldier and an Italian deserter, trapped near the Monte Cassino monastery in WWII, bridge their language barrier over a stolen rooster as Allied bombers approach.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects WWII proximity to explode into violence or ideology—instead Rotondo lets a rooster do the talking, which is either profound or absurd, and honestly the film earns the ambiguity by refusing to pick a lane.
A formally composed meditation on shared mortality that channels the contemplative war cinema of Bresson and Pasolini, though the rooster-as-bridge conceit occasionally threatens to tip into sentimentality—Rotondo's restraint mostly holds the line.
The genius move isn't the language barrier or the monastery backdrop—it's trusting the rooster as a genuine third character, a object that forces physical comedy and tenderness into the same frame, which transforms what could've been a stage-play two-hander into something tactile and alive.