There are road movies, and then there are road movies where nobody quite knows where they are going — and that is precisely the point. The Last One for the Road, Francesco Sossai’s sophomore feature, released on VOD on June 16, 2026, is one of those rare films that manages to feel simultaneously aimless and deeply purposeful. Winner of ten David di Donatello Awards — Italy’s equivalent of the Oscars — including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, it arrives with serious credentials, even if its heroes most decidedly do not.

We meet Carlobianchi (Sergio Romano) and Doriano (Pierpaolo Capovilla) asleep in a parked car, oblivious to a green light, until an irate horn jolts them back to life. “Shall we have one last drink?” Carlobianchi groggily asks. And so begins a journey that is less a road trip than a prolonged, affectionate stumble through the Veneto region of northern Italy — a landscape of abandoned buildings, shuttered restaurants, and half-finished houses left behind by the collapse of a once-booming economy. These two washed-up small-time crooks have a plan: pick up their old partner Genio from the airport after years of self-imposed exile in Argentina, and perhaps dig up some long-buried cash along the way. They cannot quite remember which airport he is flying into.

What makes the film so unexpectedly moving is not the caper — which proceeds with cheerful incompetence — but the texture of the world Sossai has built around it. Shot on 35mm and Super 16mm by cinematographer Massimiliano Kuveiller, the film finds real beauty in desolate spaces and weathered faces, drawing comparisons to the melancholy visual world of Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki. This is not the Venice of tourist postcards, but a quieter, more honest Italy — one ravaged by globalization, nostalgic for what it has lost, and not entirely sure what it has gained.

Along the way, the pair befriend Giulio (Filippo Scotti, memorable from Sorrentino’s The Hand of God), a shy architecture student who gradually warms to their rambling philosophy and drunken generosity. Their influence on him is real, even if the lessons are hard to pin down — words of wisdom tend to get swallowed by a helicopter overhead or lost in the fog of the next morning. “We know fuck all,” Doriano tells Giulio near the end, “but we know everything.” That paradox is the film’s beating heart.

Funny, tender, and shot through with the particular sadness of things that cannot be recovered, The Last One for the Road earns its place alongside the great picaresque road movies of European cinema.

The Last One for the Road is streaming right now.