“With Agon, Bertelli demonstrates a clear command of tone, structure, and intellect.”

Agon, the first feature from director Giulio Bertelli, tells the story of three women training for and competing in a fictional 2024 Olympic Games set in the invented Italian city of Ludoj. Each athlete prepares for a different discipline: one judo, one fencing, and one rifle shooting. The film situates their journeys with the pressure that defines Olympic-level competition, ranging from physical and social to political and technological. Agon is interested in how these intensely physical, violent, and often warlike sports exist within an increasingly volatile world, while at the same time remaining strangely insulated from it. The athletes prepare mostly through screens, training footage, and controlled environments. The film becomes a study of obsession, discipline, and what these athletes are willing to sacrifice mentally and physically in order to compete at the highest level.

Alice Bellandi plays herself and anchors the film as the judoka. In real life, Bellandi is one of the most successful figures in international judo; she’s an Olympic and World Champion in the 78 kg category. Her presence gives the film a propinquity that is difficult to replicate. Her performance is not traditionally acted, but it is deeply felt and completely immersive. There is something raw and visceral in the way she moves and in the way she carries pain. She embodies the loss of control that comes with pushing the body beyond its limits, and the film captures her struggle with a kind of unfiltered intensity.

Alongside her, Yile Vianello plays Giovanna Falconetti as the fencer, delivering a performance that grows increasingly complex as the film progresses. By the end, her portrayal becomes haunting, as she begins to confront the consequences of her decisions. Her pursuit of perfection leads to a kind of emotional numbness, and when that façade cracks the result is striking. There is a shock to her realization and an awareness of what her single-minded focus has cost her and others.

Sofija Zobina, as the rifle shooter Alex Sokolov, offers something colder, more controlled. Her performance is restrained and almost distant, yet layered with tension. Alex is already an Olympic star, but her position becomes precarious after she appears in a controversial video celebrating the killing of wolves. The video clashes with the carefully managed public image expected of the Olympics and its athletes. The backlash forces her to confront the bureaucratic machinery of the sport, where reputation and optics matter as much as performance. Her arc highlights how little separation there is between the athlete and the athlete’s image, and how actions outside of the sport can have just as much of an effect on career ambitions. Unlike Bellandi, both Vianello and Zobina have prior acting experience and are not Olympic athletes (for instance, both previously performed in Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera).

Bertelli interweaves the three narratives, showing how each woman pushes herself to extremes in pursuit of success. Early on, Alice suffers a knee injury, and in what may be one of the film’s most unforgettable sequences, Bertelli includes raw footage of a knee surgery during the title sequence. The scene is unflinching, with bone, cartilage, blood, poking, and drilling. It evokes the works of Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, specifically their film De Humani Corporis Fabrica. The sequence is difficult to watch and almost nauseating at times, but it establishes Bertelli’s commitment to confronting the physical realities of sport. From there, Alice’s journey becomes one of constant recalibration: weight loss, weight gain, rehabilitation, pain management. The body is shown as something that is hard to control, manipulate and endure, while at the same time, malleable to an extent in order to reach goals.

Giovanna’s trajectory similarly revolves around precision and failure. A single mistake in competition derails her Olympic ambitions, and the film lingers on the aftermath as she confronts the bureaucratic processes, the pressure to perform flawlessly, and the impossibility of recovery once the system decides you have faltered. The Olympic apparatus itself becomes a kind of invisible opponent, shaping outcomes as much as skill or preparation.

Across all three stories, Bertelli draws a connection between physical discipline and technological mediation. Training has evolved and is now augmented through data, screens, and simulations. The athletes refine their movements through digital statistics and feedback, and at times the film juxtaposes their efforts with video game imagery, blurring the line between lived experience and simulation. While the sports are rooted in the physicality of the body, they are increasingly shaped with technological advances.

There is also a disconnect running through the film. These athletes exist in highly specialized worlds, often removed and insulated from broader social realities. Judo, fencing, and rifle shooting are not universally accessible sports; they are tied to extreme societal privilege and access. Especially for fencing and rifle shooting, these are not sports for the lower, middle, or even upper middle classes. Hopefully Bertelli is aware of this. There is a subtle irony in how these characters pursue excellence while remaining rather detached from the world beyond their training environments. Their biggest challenges in life will be competing for something most people will never have a shot at. Not because of skill, but because of their social status. Given Bertelli’s own background, as part of the Prada family, this perspective carries an added layer as if he’s aware of his own privilege and willing to acknowledge it. The film gestures, at times, toward the structures that make these pursuits possible, even as it focuses on the individuals within them. The mention that Italy financially rewards Olympic medalists adds to this tension as success is both personal and systemically reinforced.

What ultimately forms the film, however, is Bertelli’s refusal to reduce these women athletes to symbols. Despite their detachment, despite the privilege or isolation their sports may imply, Bertelli allows them to remain human. Their contradictions are visible. Their vulnerabilities emerge. Bellandi especially, as a real Olympic athlete, brings a complexity that resists simplification, and her presence helps anchor the film with a truly lived experience.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Agon is that it is not a documentary. Despite carrying all the hallmarks of one, it is entirely constructed, set within a fictional place and narrative. It recalls the kind of work recognized by the Cinema Eye Honors’ “Heterodox Award”, films that blur the boundary between documentary and fiction. That fluidity becomes one of the film’s greatest strengths. It constantly challenges the viewer’s sense of what is real and what is staged, and in doing so it furthers the depth of its artistry.

Visually, the film is striking. Mauro Chiarello’s cinematography is composed with precision and control, mirroring the disciplines it depicts. Each frame feels deliberate and measured. It rarely feels like the work of a first-time director, though there are moments where Bertelli’s more experimental flourishes don’t fully cohere. Still, these are minor inconsistencies in what is otherwise a confident debut.

With Agon, Bertelli demonstrates a clear command of tone, structure, and intellect. It is a film that is as interested in the body as it is in the systems that shape it, and in the tension between sports as competitions or something more violent. As a first feature, Agon announces Bertelli as a director already rigorously using form and depth, and as a filmmaker who is worth watching going forward.