A film destined to warm the hearts of Italian-Australians will be one of the highlights of this year’s Italian film festival, writes arts editor HELEN MUSA.

Signorinella: Little Miss, written, directed and produced by Angelo Pricolo, Jason McFadyen and Shannon Swan, pays tribute to the powerful women who have sustained their families ever since Italians started migrating to Australia in the early part of the 20th century. 

The diminutive Signorinella means something like “missy” or “little miss” and gives a hint of the cross-generational nature of the film, which speaks of the many women who began their lives in Australia as small children, young mothers or innocent, young, proxy brides.

The content of the film, will also be in general release from October , is remarkable for its specificity, but some stories are unexpected. 

We see Jewish businesspeople join Italian seamstresses to make Melbourne’s Flinders Lane a fashion hub, with the Italians picking up a bit of Yiddish. Yet, according to seamstress Rosetta Pricolo, they were still referred to not by name, but by number.

Maybe that was better than being dismissed as a wog or dago, a taunt most of the film’s subjects experienced.

Chef and restaurateur Paula Toppi gives us the actual gargantuan menu that tenor Luciano Pavarotti worked his way through at the family restaurant. He even took home a tray of tiramisu at the end.

Bridal gown queen Mariana Boggio Hardwick tells us how being Italian had meant she brought a new view to the wedding industry. 

Cathy Rossi Harris, the chairperson of Harris Farm Markets, tells what a cultural eye-opener their honeymoon in Italy was for her husband David before they came back and opened the business. 

Elina Garreffa, of the sultana empire Tabletop Grapes, describes the hard work of women on the farms. 

We meet politician Allegra Spender, the daughter of fashion designer Carla Zampatti, who remembers when her mother was asked to design a Ford Laser. 

Towards the end of the film we meet powerful figures such as politician Frank Arena, and super-singer Filippina Lydia “Tina” Arena, but the focus is more on the women behind the scenes. 

When I catch up with co-director Angela Piccolo, he tells me that the title came from Achille Togliani’s Neapolitan song, which he loved as a kid. 

“I grew up with Neapolitan music, and I still insist that we call it Napoli, not Naples,” he says,“the song just seemed to resonate”.

One of the most striking features of the movie is the way that Pricolo and the technical team have manipulated static images so that, for instance, a photo of a father waiting to greet his family first shows him with a grim look on his face which resolves into a smile and the movement continues. 

“We were very conscious of the fact that using AI could be controversial,” Pricolo says, “so we did it with full permission of the subjects, but most of them were so excited and one of them, 94 year-old Celestina Mammone, saw her father come to life for the first time in many years.”

“The incredible stories that we put together almost picked themselves,” he says, praising his colleagues McFadyen and Swan for helping discover the footage.

Narrated by star film actress Greta Scacchi, speaking with a natural Australian accent, the film mixes women who speak like Aussies with those who retain their Italian accents, often speaking with their hands.

As he proceeded to shoot interviews in private homes, Pricolo says he found that it put many of the subjects in their comfort zone to switch to Italian.

“In our section on proxy brides I first spoke to Carmela Rocca in English, but then we reverted to Italian and she lit up like a Christmas tree,” he says.

A key part of the film concerns the strong women from Griffith to Innisfail who took over the cane farms and other businesses when Italian-Australian men were interned as suspected enemy aliens during World War II. 

“As the son of an Italian migrant, it is extraordinary to hear these stories,” Pricolo says, “but of course it’s not just a story of Italian immigrants, it’s a story of the many people who came to Australia, showing how through how many cultures, we are a better country.”

Italian Film Festival 2025, Palace Electric, September 19-October 16. Signorinella: Little Miss, September 20 and 28.