“The happiest town in Italy” sounds like a place to book a vacation. In The Holy Boy, it sounds like a reason to start asking questions. Director Paolo Strippoli’s Italian folk-horror film arrives on Shudder Friday, November 27, 2026, bringing a village’s promise of relief into a much more disturbing light.
Strippoli, whose work includes A Classic Horror Story and the upcoming The Spiral, directs a screenplay written with Jacopo Del Giudice and Milo Tissone. Michele Riondino and Giulio Feltri lead the film, which runs 125 minutes and is presented in Italian. The setup promises a community whose apparent peace comes at a terrible cost, with Sergio’s arrival threatening the arrangement.
Riondino plays Sergio, a teacher carrying a painful past who is transferred to the secluded village of Remis. The town has a reputation for happiness, but its residents share a secret behind that cheerful surface. Every week they gather to embrace Matteo, an introverted 15-year-old played by Feltri, whose hugs can take away pain and sorrow.
A town leaning on a child to carry its suffering is already an unsettling idea. Sergio’s discovery that the devotion surrounding Matteo is far from benevolent turns it into something more dangerous. When he tries to rescue the boy known as the Angel of Remis, the community responds with vengeance, putting the promise of shared happiness up against what the village is willing to do to preserve it.
The film comes to streaming after winning the Audience Award and New Wave Best Director at Fantastic Fest, along with Official Selections at the Venice Film Festival and BFI London Film Festival. The press materials include praise from Variety’s Jessica Kiang, Dread Central’s Chad Collins, and RogerEbert.com’s Peter Sobczynski, with their responses emphasizing the film’s grief, unease, and examination of the cost of passing personal suffering onto another person.
“A clever, creepy Italian chiller. Under cover of an enjoyably eerie horror movie, director Paolo Strippoli investigates the dangers of displaced grief.. Maintaining its moral ambivalence even as it ramps up to a spectacular finale.” – Jessica Kiang, Variety
“A holy experience in folk horror worth canonizing. Director Paolo Strippoli’s immensely unsettling Italian chiller The Holy Boy reaches straight through the chest to grab hold of your heart and squeeze it dry.” – Chad Collins, Dread Central
“An intriguing chiller that is more interested in trying to disturb viewers than in simply grossing them out. A precise and cutting examination of the perils of trying to offload one’s own personal pain onto someone else.” – Peter Sobczynski, RogerEbert.com
Before the Shudder debut, the announced screening schedule includes Friday, November 20, at 9 p.m. at Soho House and Ludlow House in New York, Soho House West Hollywood in Los Angeles, and Soho House in Chicago. A Sunday, November 22, at 7 p.m. screening is set for The Twisted Spine in Brooklyn. On Monday, November 23, at 9 p.m., screenings are planned at Soho House in Austin and Nashville. Attendance and RSVP arrangements should be confirmed with the organizers.
The cast also includes Paolo Pierobon, Romana Maggiora Vergano, Sergio Romano, Anna Bellato, Sandra Toffolatti, and Roberto Citran. Producers are Domenico Procacci, Laura Paolucci, Ines Vasilevic, and Stefano Sardo, with executive producers Ivan Fiorini and Attilio Moro and co-producers Jožko Rutar and Miha Černec.
Behind the camera, Cristiano Di Nicola serves as cinematographer, Federico Palmerini edits, and Federico Bisozzi and Davide Tomat provide the music. The film’s Italian title is La valle dei sorrisi.
Born in Corato, Bari, in 1993, Strippoli earned a Performing Arts and Sciences degree from La Sapienza University before graduating in Film Directing from Rome’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. In 2019 he won the Franco Solinas Award for Best Screenplay for L’angelo infelice, written with Del Giudice and Tissone. He co-directed Netflix’s A Classic Horror Story with Roberto De Feo in 2020, winning Best Director at the 67th Taormina Film Fest. His 2022 psychological horror feature Piove competed at Sitges, Austin Fantastic Fest, and Alice Nella Città. The Holy Boy and The Spiral, also known as L’estranea, are his third and fourth films.
The Holy Boy begins streaming on Shudder November 27. For horror fans drawn to a community hiding something rotten under a comforting ritual, this is one to put on the calendar. Remis has found a way to live without pain, and Matteo is the one paying for it.
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