The Child Who Wasn’t There

MOVIE REVIEWS
Children of the Monkey (I Figli Della Scimmia)
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Genre: Drama
Year Released: 2026
Runtime: 1h 50m
Director: Tommaso Landucci
Writers: Tommaso Landucci, Damiano Femfert
Cast: Riccardo Scamarcio, Fausto Russo Alesi, Lidiya Liberman, Cristina Odasso, Tancredi Naldini, Andrea Aggio, Luigi Diberti
Where to Watch: shown at the 2026 Venice International Film Festival

RAVING REVIEW: Some subjects become uncomfortable almost as soon as they're spoken aloud, and CHILDREN OF THE MONKEY deliberately chooses one of them. Dario is the father of a disabled child whom he loves and cares for, only to discover something about himself when he grows increasingly close to his teenage nephew. This boy represents the son Dario once imagined having, and some part of him prefers that imagined version of fatherhood to the life he actually has.

That distinction is important because CHILDREN OF THE MONKEY isn't built around the suggestion that Dario doesn't love his son. The far more difficult idea is that love doesn't automatically eliminate disappointment, regret, selfishness, resentment, fantasy, or the countless other emotions we're uncomfortable admitting can exist alongside it. Parenthood is frequently discussed in absolutes, particularly when disability is involved, and Tommaso Landucci and co-writer Damiano Femfert head directly toward a thought many people would rather pretend doesn't exist.

Even the title carries more weight once its meaning becomes clear. Inspired by Aesop's story of a monkey who favors one offspring over another, CHILDREN OF THE MONKEY turns that idea inward by effectively giving Dario two sons: the child he has and the child he once imagined. His nephew isn't literally that second child, of course, which makes Dario's attachment to him considerably more complicated. He's responding to an idea that has suddenly taken human form.

That creates an interesting distinction between wanting another child and wanting another version of your own life. Dario isn't simply looking across the family table and deciding that someone else's kid seems easier. He's confronted by a version of fatherhood that allows him to imagine who he might have been under different circumstances, and that fantasy can become intoxicating because it isn't burdened by reality. His relationship with his nephew can remain exciting precisely because Dario doesn't have to carry the full responsibility of being his father.

The danger comes when fantasy starts demanding a place in the real world. Dario can convince himself that he's helping, connecting, mentoring, or simply enjoying a relationship with someone who looks up to him, while another motivation lies beneath it all. That gives CHILDREN OF THE MONKEY room to examine selfishness without needing to turn Dario into a monster. That distinction could determine whether the film becomes genuinely upsetting or merely provocative.

There would've been a much easier version of this story in which Dario's behavior made it clear exactly how we're supposed to judge him. That would also remove nearly everything interesting about the premise. People are rarely cruel enough to recognize their own cruelty while it's happening, and self-deception becomes especially powerful when someone can point toward real affection as evidence that their intentions must therefore be good.

The nephew complicates that equation even further because he's not an object waiting for Dario to project himself onto. He's a teenager forming his own relationship with an uncle who suddenly offers him a different kind of attention, and the emotional danger isn't limited to Dario neglecting the family he already has. He's also stepping into his brother's place and allowing a young person to participate in a relationship whose meaning Dario himself may not fully understand.

That makes the family structure far more interesting than a simple triangle. Dario's choices affect his son, nephew, brother, and everyone forced to recognize the imbalance developing around them. Every act of attention given to one person can feel like something being taken from another, even when no one involved can easily explain why.

The most sensitive part of CHILDREN OF THE MONKEY will always be Dario's son. A story like this can easily reduce a disabled character to the source of somebody else's emotional struggle, leaving the audience to understand disability primarily through the burden experienced by a parent. Landucci's premise asks for something considerably harder: acknowledge Dario's forbidden thoughts without validating the idea that his child's life is somehow the lesser outcome.

That line is incredibly narrow. Dario's grief can be real without making his son a tragedy, just as his love can be real without making every thought or action that follows acceptable. Allowing those ideas to coexist is where the story has the potential to become much more than an exercise in making an audience uncomfortable.

Riccardo Scamarcio also feels like a particularly interesting choice for Dario because the role doesn't call for an obvious emotional transformation. The character needs to exist inside contradictions, loving one child while becoming fascinated by the possibility represented by another. Playing that too aggressively would turn Dario into someone we could dismiss, while making him too sympathetic would risk excusing behavior the film should be questioning.

There is another layer underneath all of this that has very little to do with disability and everything to do with the lives people imagine for themselves. Parents aren't the only people who build hypothetical futures, only to discover that reality has little interest in following the plans they've made. Dario's situation makes that gap unusually painful. However, the underlying temptation is recognizable: if the life you once pictured suddenly appeared beside the life you're actually living, how certain would you be that you wouldn't look?

The answer may not say anything flattering about us. CHILDREN OF THE MONKEY seems far more interested in that uncomfortable possibility than in constructing a clean moral lesson from it, and that's the direction this material needs. Dario's mistake isn't merely wanting something different; it's allowing that private desire to reshape his relationships with people who never agreed to become substitutes for the life he thinks he lost.

That leaves CHILDREN OF THE MONKEY with an unusually complicated definition of acceptance. Accepting your child isn't the same thing as never wondering how life might have gone differently, and loving someone doesn't erase every selfish part of the person doing the loving. The harder responsibility is recognizing those thoughts for what they are before fantasy begins hurting the people standing directly in front of you.

If Landucci can maintain that distinction through the finished film, CHILDREN OF THE MONKEY has the foundation for a deeply uncomfortable family drama without needing manufactured villains or easy forgiveness. Its strongest idea may ultimately be the simplest one: sometimes the life we imagine isn't dangerous because we can never have it, but because one day we might encounter something close enough to make us believe we can.

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[photo courtesy of HBO MAX, LEBOWSKI, LUNGTA FILM, MOSAICON FILM, RAI CINEMA]

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