For Italian actor and director Valeria Golino, it was a dream come true to play feminist writer Goliarda Sapienza in Mario Martone’s Cannes competition title “Fuori.”

Golino was in Cannes last year as the director of the “The Art of Joy” TV series, based on Sapienza’s posthumous book of the same name. This year, in “Fuori” – the title translates as “Outside” in Italian – she plays Sapienza during the 1980s when, after “The Art of Joy” is rejected by the Italian publishing world, she ends up in a Rome prison for stealing jewelry. Behind bars, she forges a deep bond with a repeat offender and political activist named Roberta, played by Matilda De Angelis.

Below, Golino speaks with Variety about her passion for Sapienza – whom she met when she was 18 and acted in a film directed by Sapienza’s former husband Citto Maselli – and her chemistry with De Angelis,...