A pure love story that collides with the darkest prejudice. Stranizza d’amuri, in cinemas from today with BIM Distribuzione, is the directorial debut of Giuseppe Fiorello in which he returns to his native Sicily in the 1980s with sincerity and sensitivity in search of the freedom of adolescence. The protagonists are the two young Gabriele Pizzurro and Samuele Segreto.
The sea is one step away, while the beauty of a historic center observes it. The two young teenagers protagonists of the first work of Joseph Fiorello, Strangeness of lovewhich starts from the true and tragic story of two teenagers persecuted in 1980 in Giarre, for the mere fact of loving each other, and builds a sensitive parable on the beauty of love.
Arriving in theaters from March 23 for BIM Distribution, was written by Andrea Cedrola and Carlo Salsa as well as by the director, with the collaboration of Josella Porto. The protagonists are the two convincing boys, Gabriel Pizzuro e Secret Samueltogether with them a rich and well-assorted cast, composed among others by Fabrizia Sacchi e Simona Sickthe two mothers, Antonio De Matteo, Enrico Roccaforte, Roberto Salemi, Giuseppe Spata.
A pure love like that between teenagers, the personification of absolute freedom: hair in the wind on a motorbike in the summer, in search of a future, without fear. It is the gloom of a society incapable of overcoming its own prejudices that he wants to undermine with his story Joseph Fiorellowhich recalls personal memories, between music and songs that become existential soundtracks, and a language that can only be the dialect, lively and sometimes violent.
“I read an article about the story of Antonio and Giorgio, to whom I dedicate the film, a dozen years ago and since then it has become an obsession”, he said Joseph Fiorello. “I almost felt guilty for not knowing it sooner. As a Sicilian, I felt co-responsible for that mentality that covered up this story. This is why I wanted to tell it, after years of reflections, with a step back as a director, but also making use of good screenwriters to stage it. There has never been a truth, after all, a note was found and it was thought of a murder suicide. At that time I relied on poetic rather than thematic imagination, in a summer in which two boys meet and travel together. An intimist story that I wanted to support a universal one like the triumphant adventure of the 1982 World Cup. A moment of great social positivity for the country”.
In departing from the real story, Fiorello also chose not to film in Giarre at all, out of discretion, so as not to make people suffer further who probably still feel the heavy weight of the choices made forty years earlier. Just when, after the arrest of Matteo Messina Denaro, Sicily has returned to talk about the “usual” mafia iconography and no longer, as fortunately more and more in recent years, for its beauty and culture . It is precisely in this land where the patriarchy is so present, Fiorello himself is keen to underline, that the first organized gay movement was born after the crime in Giarre Italian, which only years later from Palermo would take on a national dimension. There is a lot of music in this story, starting with the title, which evokes a song by Franco Battiatorepeatedly present, not only directly but also as tutelary soul of the author of the music, Giovanni Caccamo, but also of the cultural beauty of this land.
In the soul of the two boys reigns something personal, intimate of the director, at least in terms of memories. “I borrowed my adolescence”, he said, “there is part of me in one of them. It is an age in which friends love each other even if they are not homosexuals, with a purity that does not need sex to express itself. We are very backward compared to teenagers, who look at each other and love each other. It is all natural and normal. Some say I made a courageous film, but it’s a shame to think that it takes courage to love yourself, it means that there is hate lurking that wants to attack you. In the film there are my shyness and the knowledge of my land, when we went shooting in the morning I already knew what to find, how to move the car, the places and the Sicilian mentality, silence like fears. In my heart I hoped to make a historical film about ‘how we were’, but it seems to me that the question repeats itself. Discrimination at home is more dangerous than discrimination on the street”.