Meet Dafne: A woman who holds her family together despite the loss of her mother, all while rewriting the narrative for disabled characters in film.
Have you ever watched a movie with a disabled character? If so, do you remember their name? On March 27, 2025, Professor Dan Paul (Italian Cinema and Gender Studies) invited his audience to reflect on these questions at his lecture: “Depictions of Disability in Italian Media.” He found that even those who had recently watched a movie with a disabled character struggled to recall the character’s name, which Paul believed was evidence of how movies objectify and define characters by their disability. Using the Italian movie Dafne as an example, Paul discussed how the improved treatment of disabled characters in film can empower underrepresented communities.
Lessons from Dafne
Movies that feature main characters who struggle with a form of disability often end with them overcoming their disability in some miraculous way. This depiction “gives us the idea that disability can be overcome, fixed, or cured, even when this is not possible in many—if not most—cases,” Paul explained. It also teaches audiences that disability is something to be cured, not something that merely is. Though this trend places disability at the forefront of audience’s minds, it does so with the intention of inspiring an able-bodied audience through comparison and reinforces an existing stigma against individuals who appear or act different than the accepted normal.
Italian director Federico Bondi’s 2019 film Dafne, on the other hand, writes a different narrative for individuals with disability. This movie follows the life of a young girl with Down syndrome named Dafne as she and her father, Luigi, navigate the sudden death of her mother. Though Dafne finds herself able to cope with the loss, her father struggles to maintain a sense of normalcy in his wife’s absence. As time progresses, Dafne becomes responsible for holding her family together as the breadwinner and caretaker for her family. Though somewhat limited by her disability, the movie shows that Dafne—and individuals like her—can still lead a normal life.
Making Disabilities Realistic
Throughout the movie, Dafne holds a steady job, looks after her father’s health, mourns the loss of her mother, and navigates a crush on her coworker, all of which Paul believed set her apart from other disabled characters in films. By giving her character power to contribute to and support her family, this movie hopes to show that disability doesn’t render a person incapable. “The fact that roles typically assigned to able-bodied and neurotypical individuals . . . are taken up by a disabled, neurodivergent person . . . helps provide a more authentic representation of Down syndrome than has been seen before—at least in Italian cinema,” Paul said.
Dafne’s role in her family not only paints a more realistic image of what life may look like for individuals with disabilities, but it also redefines what it means to be able-bodied. Showing Dafne taking care of her father suggests that being able-bodied has little to do with the presence of disability. “Her ability to do things considered normal by the able-bodied . . . effectively characterizes her as nondisabled and provides a stark contrast to her father, who is unable to do the same,” Paul noted.
Paul concluded, “The film clearly troubles the previously clear lines between disability and able-bodiedness in ways that make me hopeful that we have turned a page in disability representation in Italian cinema.”
Learn more about BYU’s Italian program here.