Paolo Strippoli

The Holy Boy or La Valle Dei Sorrisi, haunts homes just in time for the holidays thanks to the streaming service Shudder. Directed by Italian gay filmmaker Paolo Strippoli, The Holy Boy is set in the Alpine village of Remis. A teacher named Sergio moves to the mountainside town in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy, to begin a new life. He encounters Matteo, a 15-year-old boy who is a healer for the surrounding community, which leads to a journey filled with sinister secrets.

Strippoli was born in Corato, Puglia, Italy and has lived in Rome since 2012. He writes and directs films there, but has traveled to promote his work around the world. This has led him to attend the Chicago International Film Festival several times, most recently for The Spiral in 2026.

JN: Were you always interested in filmmaking?

PS: Yes. I was a gay boy in a city that used to be small; now the population is bigger, with 55,000 people, and it is located in southern Italy. At the time, I couldn’t speak about girls and I didn’t like sports. I felt alone during my teenage years. I had more friends in elementary school. After my friends had their sexual awakening, I ended up alone again because I had a different sexual awakening than they did. I found refuge at the cinema and in horror films, especially. These films made me feel brave and courageous.

JN: Did you admire a particular queer filmmaker or film?

PS: When I was 14 years old, Let the Right One In came out in theaters. Some people might not think it was a queer film, but for me, it has incredible queerness in it because it is about identity. It is also about homosexuality, which is not easily defined. It is about a boy and a vampire who some may think is a girl, but he is a boy who has been castrated. There is a scene in the film where the boy finds the vampire in the closet in the dark. You can see the scar on the vampire, but it is not underlined in the film. At the end of the day, it’s not important if the vampire is a boy or a girl. I have always loved films where the queerness is not treated directly.

JN: So this influenced your approach to Holy Boy?

PS: Yes. I didn’t want the homosexuality of Matteo to be made into a problem because Matteo has bigger issues. When I was younger, I needed to see gay characters not treated as gay characters. I also wanted to see gay characters doing bad things. In cinema, gay characters are usually good and I wanted some that are more antiheroes for my films.

As soon as I could make movies, I wrote this script and I was young at the time. It took seven years to make The Holy Boy.

JN: It is a different situation when a gay writer composes a story with a gay villainess character as opposed to a straight writer doing the same thing.

PS: I don’t think he’s a villain. I think he is desperate. Other people have put him in a cage and eventually he explodes. I don’t believe in good or evil and I don’t feel Matteo is evil. We become good and evil depending on what we have lived through. It is really important to practice empathy towards other people so they don’t become dangerous.

JN: Did Giulio Feltri have the birthmark white hair in real life?

PS: No. His hair was part of the story and it would grow whiter as he used his powers. He was aging when that happened.

JN: Was the bully inspired by someone in your life?

PS: Yes and one of my first crushes was on my bully. It was inspired by something that happened in my past. It was very important to me that the two young people had a relationship. I don’t think that Lorenzo Berni, played by Diego Nardini, is a bully, but really another desperate character. Think about it, he has a mother who has a painting of a schoolmate in their living room. This could make a person go mad with just that part alone. I believe he’s a sad teenager and not a bully.

The lesson is that if people harm you, then you could become something you don’t want to be. It’s important to treat people well or they could go in a bad direction.

JN: It sounds like there are many layers to The Holy Boy.

PS: It all depends on the characters. They are ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. When ordinary people are used in a story, then it’s based on reality and the contemporary world. It’s the only way a film could speak to me.

JN: How was filming major crowd scenes on The Holy Boy set?

PS: We had a few rehearsals before shooting the big scene. We had about 150 people involved in that shot and I wanted double of that amount. I wanted 300 people, but because of budget issues, we couldn’t have that many. The room was so big and I wanted it to look even fuller, but that’s okay.

We had a couple of rehearsals before filming it in the mountains. We met all the extras in a nearby city. We actually had around 170 people, but some of them were scared of the scene. We didn’t fake anything in that scene. The image in my mind was the body of each person opening like a flower around Matteo and falling down around him. The problem was that it was dangerous for the actors to all fall at the same moment on top of each other. It would be a sandwich of people. The fear of being hurt made a few of the background players drop out and some were young. Luckily, many people stayed. We didn’t use CGI at all and I am very happy about the results.

JN: What are you working on next?

PS: A new film titled The Spiral that I shot this past summer. It will be released next year, hopefully in the United States. It’s not a horror film. It’s a family saga and a psychological thriller. It follows a family living in Bari in the year 1999 that moves into the present day. It covers the rise and fall of a family.

It’s an exciting project led by a woman this time. Romana Maggiora Vergano, who played Michela in The Holy Boy, is also in this film. She’s a rising star in Italy and I was happy to work with her again. It is about a mom, a daughter and an unknown woman character.

The Holy Boy haunts shudder.com beginning November 27, 2026.