“A modo mio”, a short film by Danilo Rovani freely inspired by a true story
“To Maria Paola and to all those who love, deeply, atavistically, without limits and without judgments” – Danilo Rovani
In my own way is the short film by Danilo Rovani with Cosimo Alberti and Denise Capuano, produced by Itinerari di Napoli by Massimiliano Sacchetto and Carmela Autiero (https://napoli.itineraridellacampania.it) and iKen ONLUS, which takes its cue from the story of Maria Paola Gaglione and Ciro Migliore, two young people from the province of Naples who hit the headlines because their love turned into a tragedy.
Due to the topic it deals with and the quality of the product, the short film was chosen as a manifesto against homophobic bullying, which will be presented as an absolute preview at the first edition of OMOVIES@SCHOOL Film Festival next summer.
“As IDN – says Massimiliano Sacchetto – we have been working in communication for many years, signing communication campaigns for artists and institutions. Over the years we wanted to broaden our interests and develop a multiple project that included more activities always linked to the world of communication and publishing, resulting in IDN itinerari di Napoli, working in partnership with various institutions and local bodies. We have dedicated ourselves to the production of this work, which will be followed very soon by two other shorts, because we aim to enhance and spread quality products in the artistic and cultural field; we were convinced by the theme and the directorial idea of Rovani as well as the interpretation of the protagonists. We start from the news to highlight how our reality does not guarantee freedom of thought, nor of many other things, to the point of even prohibiting love”.
Two young people who want to live their love; Ciro, who was born called Carmela, and Maria Paola have always dreamed of a life partner, a love so strong that it makes them forget everything else. They are two young people from the outskirts of Naples, they have dropped out of school, they are chasing something else. Then they meet and it is instant love. Exactly what they were looking for. They finally live happily and go around the streets of the outskirts, which despite being degraded and squalid, in their eyes seem splendid. On that scooter they are happy, together they are happy. But her family does not accept their love, Ciro is a woman, they are two women, they have no right to love each other. And one day while they are riding their beloved scooter her brother rams them causing, in the fall, the death of Maria Paola.
The short film tells about love that should be free, joyful and instead in many cases, like this one, it becomes a deadly trap.
“We at i Ken ONLUS – explains Carlo Cremona, president of i Ken and artistic director of Omovies International Film Festival – have co-produced with IDN Itinerari di Napoli the short film “A modo mio” by Danilo Rovani which will be presented as a world premiere at the first edition of OMOVIES@SCHOOL International Film Festival next summer. A film that talks about a queer story, about those unconventional loves that tell of lives outside the box and therefore difficult to accept even more than individual choices or personal life conditions.
Love and hate are two sides of the same coin, sometimes they are the heavy condemnation of society and families in many suburbs and marginal areas of our cities. Suburbs that allow violence to emerge, where they are often frames of paintings painted by school dropouts, by violence as a natural narrative, by the Camorra and drug dealing as the only survivals. Places where bullying, including homophobic and transphobic bullying, finds natural fertility in the absence of a future.”
Rovani's narrative line moves between the street, aboard the now sadly infamous scooter and the bare stage of an empty theater; the two protagonists - says the director in his notes - become actors who play actors who in turn pay homage to the memory of the young Maria Paola. A clear linearity but at the same time metaphysical and timeless where the protagonists are first really the characters and a moment later the actors who seem to be grappling with the rehearsals of a show. A cathartic search for the version of a story that really happened but told through the cinematic lens, in an evocative and poetic way.
DIRECTOR'S NOTES: The story of Ciro and Maria Paola struck me from the first moment in a forceful way: it seemed absurd to me that a girl not even twenty years old could lose her life in a tragic fatality because of the love she felt for a man, who by society and especially by Maria Paola's family, is not recognized as a man, just because he was born a woman. The path that led Ciro to change sex is his and his alone and must be respected in its entirety just as Maria Paola's decision to love that "person" must be respected; because however you want to put it, Ciro is first of all a person, a person in love and loved in return, sexuality takes on a relative connotation in this. "love is love."
My creative nature led me to want to sublimate this dramatic and chilling story through writing; I put on paper a dialogue that, deep down, I thought could be what moved the two protagonists. I found myself giving them a voice as if they were telling their story to a phantom interviewer, right up until the moment of the tragic event. Later, encouraged by Cosimo Alberti, I decided to script that dialogue for the cinema.
And so a narrative line took shape, alternating between the street, on board the now sadly infamous scooter, and the bare stage of an empty theater (also a symbol of an extremely current condition, in which entertainment workers find themselves). Thus the two protagonists become actors who play actors who in turn pay homage to the memory of the young Maria Paola. A clear linearity but at the same time metaphysical and timeless where the protagonists are first the characters and a moment later the actors who seem to be grappling with the rehearsals of a show. A cathartic search for the version of a story that really happened but told through the cinematic lens, in an evocative and poetic way.
So I decided to shoot the short film splitting the direction in half between a reportage and a fictional story. And to do this I could only use, photographically, a neutral and sterile black and white, which would make everything even more rarefied and distant and nebulous. The black and white of reportage in fact, but also of crime news, that of the newspapers that daily try to report the facts without issuing judgments. In fact, no judgment is emitted by my story, what we want to convey to the spectators is the love story between two young people, grown up in a suburb, abandoned to themselves, without a real education, without a certain future.
The story of two people who love each other deeply and choose to live their lives “their own way” and above all the story of the life of a young woman torn from this world too soon and in such a disarming and cruel way.
Danilo Rovani
EDITORIAL TEAM
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