Charlotte Ercoli’s newest film opens with a scene that will likely feel familiar: a messy apartment and a suitcase that remains unpacked long after its owner, a New York City-based playwright named Mark Van Bloom, has returned from a vacation to Italy.

His next move — grabbing a pair of boxers from said suitcase and huffing them — may feel less familiar, though it’s far from the last time Van Bloom, played by Tim Heidecker, will repeat this sequence in what turn into increasingly desperate attempts to replicate the euphoria of his time in Florence. That euphoria, he discovers, is evoked by the scent of an Italian perfume that broke and spilled in his suitcase on the return journey to New York.

Like Ercoli’s film itself, debuting at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival, the perfume is called “Fior di Latte.” Van Bloom becomes convinced that smelling it is the key to unlocking his creative juices as he races to meet a fast-approaching deadline. As his distress grows, he adds more antics to the equation: while sniffing, he plays Italian music in the background; enlists an aspiring actress he meets on a New York street corner, played by Julia Fox, to sweet-talk him in an Italian accent, and chomps down on his favorite Italian sweet bread, pandoro.

“The movie is an analogy for addiction,” said Ercoli, who infused nods to her own experiences and upbringing as an Italian-American New Yorker in the film. Ercoli’s aunt and mother — Robin Coe-Hutshing and Jennifer Coe-Bakewell, respectively — were the founders of Studio BeautyMix at Fred Segal and bespoke fragrance brand, Memoire Liquide, which operated counters at Fred Segal and Henri Bendel.

“Growing up, I would just smell perfume all day long,” said Ercoli, who went on to create commercials for fragrance brand D.S. & Durga and initially pitched “Fior di Latte” to the company as a short film. “They politely turned it down it down, and rightfully so, because it was just too big of an idea for a perfume ad; they encouraged me to develop it into a feature film.”

The protagonist’s vacation takes inspiration from Ercoli’s own first solo trip to Italy at 14 years old. “Getting shipped off to Italy by myself, with 20 Italian cousins taking me to the disco; drinking, kissing boys, doing everything under the sun — it was the most life-changing experience I’ve ever had, and I wanted to write a movie about a guy who similarly has an experience that is just so incredible in another country that, when he comes back to his city where he feels isolated, he’s addicted to huffing the smell of his clothes.”

The film stars Marta Pozzan as Van Bloom’s Italian love interest, and includes a cast of seasoned and first-time actors, including friends of Ercoli. “I love to blend the two; there’s a great alchemy to the way they feed off of each other.”

In tandem with the film, Italian fragrance brand I Profumi di Firenze is launching a limited-edition Fior di Latte perfume on June 10 at C.O. Bigelow and Onda Beauty in New York. Retailing for $150 for a 50-ml. bottle, the fragrance is infused with notes of vanilla, orris root and honeysuckle.

As for what Ercoli is most looking forward to while debuting the film?

“Standing in the wing of the theater and hear when people laugh,” she said.