Le Pupille

This short film follows a group of rebellious young girls at a Catholic boarding school in Italy during the advent season (leading up to Christmas) during a time of scarcity and war.[7]

The writer/producer of the film said that the film is "about desires, pure and selfish, about freedom and devotion, about the anarchy that is capable of flowering in the minds of each one of them within the confines of the strict boarding school,” Rohrwacher said. She added that “although the obedient girls can’t move, their pupils can dance the unrestrained dance of freedom.”[8]

The film had its world premier at the Cannes Film Festival[9] before traveling the festival circuit and was released on the Disney+ streaming platform in 2022.

Le Pupille was nominated for the "IMDbPro Short Cuts Award for Best Film" award at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022. It was also nominated for the best short film at the Philadelphia Film Festival in 2022, and was given honorable mentions for Best Production Design (to Emita Frigato and Eachele Meliadò), and for best actor (Melissa Falasconi).[10]

Noel Murray of the Los Angeles Times said that, "this charming and surprisingly suspenseful film shares with Rohrwacher’s other work a puckish sense of humor and a deep understanding of how sometimes, in the name of righteousness, people can be awfully wicked."[11]

John Serbe of Decider said that "Le Pupille is a mischievous little thing with a smartly realized setting and visual aesthetic. Shot on warm and grainy 16mm film, it looks suitably authentic – and the emotions and laughs you’ll experience are, too."[12]

Sarah Williams of InReviewOnline said: "Rohrwacher’s amoral fable, though a delightfully rare higher-profile mid-length film dropped into an era of silver screen epic versus glorified TikTok binarism, could arguably benefit from a lengthier study of the institution its narrative is held within. Though the somewhat underbaked narrative is limited to that of the letter, the cultural rise of a Mussolini-era fascist Italy lurking in the background, paralleled with the authoritarian religious state of the Catholic school, reflects a maturation of Rohrwacher’s typical themes."[13]

• Le Pupille at IMDb