Carlotta Antonelli

The Gaze That Asked for No Permission

Carlotta Antonelli didn't need years of supporting roles for the industry to take notice. In 2017, she stepped in front of Netflix cameras to play Angelica Sale in Suburra: The Series, and the impact was immediate. She was not the typical new face of Roman cinema. She had a way of moving that radiated authenticity and a gaze that avoided the clichés of the neighborhood ingenue.

And the gamble paid off.

Talking about her means stepping away from the traditional spotlight of more rigid acting academies. She trained in workshops and practical courses in Rome, but her real school was the frenetic pace of the set. In 2016, she took part in the series Solo, and that's where she began to understand how the machinery of large-scale television fiction worked. But it was the role of the young woman tied to the Anacleti clan that put her on the map of international productions.

The Risk of Being Trapped by a Genre

Many actors would have settled for repeating the tough-girl-from-the-suburbs role for a decade. Antonelli decided she didn't want to be just the shadow of a mob boss. In 2019, she shot Bangla, a comedy directed by Phaim Bhuiyan that let her explore a much lighter, more naturalistic register. The film won the David di Donatello for Best First Feature, and she proved she could carry a storyline without relying on crime drama.

Because acting isn't just screaming or crying in front of a gun.

Sometimes it's simply being there and letting the camera catch the silence between two lines of script. In 2021, she starred in Morrison under the direction of Federico Zampaglione. Playing Lodo in a story about music and generational crisis required a restraint she had not shown in her earlier work. Italian auteur cinema found in her a tool able to adapt to modest budgets and ambitious narratives alike.

Technical Maturity and the Global Leap

In 2023, she took part in the series Everybody Loves Diamonds. She shared the cast with major actors such as Kim Rossi Stuart, and the production was distributed worldwide through Amazon Prime Video. It was a logical step for someone who no longer needed to prove her worth in the local Roman market. The series was filmed mainly in Turin and Antwerp, with an international crew that demanded absolute precision in every shot.

The global market was no longer an option.

That same year she shot Adagio under the direction of Stefano Sollima. She returned to noir, but from a different acting maturity, far removed from the urgency of her early years. The production had an estimated budget of 10 million euros and premiered in the official selection of the Venice Film Festival. The film closed the director's Roman trilogy, and Antonelli delivered on the demands of a spare, violent script.

Filming of her outdoor sequences wrapped in just three weeks during an especially hot summer in the Italian capital.