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CANNES 2014 Critics’ Week

Darker Than Midnight: a drag queen strutting on the Croisette

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- Following the incredible success of Salvo in 2013 (winning the Grand Prix and Revelation Prize), Italy is in competition at the Critics’ Week with Darker Than Midnight, Sebastiano Riso’s debut

Darker Than Midnight: a drag queen strutting on the Croisette
Più buio di mezzanotte by Sebastiano Riso

The film is based on the life of Davide Cordova – stage name: Fuxia Loka – one of the iconic drag queens of the Muccassassina, the famous travelling gay party in Rome. “I’m portraying the things that people don’t want to see, the things that are left to one side,” explains the young director from Catania, who wrote the screenplay together with Stefano Grasso and Andrea Cedrola.

In fact, it is in this exact Sicilian city that the story kicks off, with a cast including Davide Capone and Lucia Sardo, as well as Pippo Delbono, Carla Amodeo, Sebastian Gimelli Morosini, Giovanni Giulizia, Gabriele Mannino and Rosario Raineri. The film also sees the extraordinary involvement of Fabio Grossi and Micaela Ramazzotti. Davide is a teenager unlike all the others. There’s something in him, in the way he looks, that makes him look like a girl. Davide runs away from home at the age of 14. His instinct, or perhaps fate itself, leads him to choose to take shelter in the biggest park in Catania: Villa Bellini. It’s a different world that the rest of the city pretends not to notice – the world of a marginalised population.

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Director Sebastiano Riso has expressed how much of an honour it is for him that Darker Than Midnight [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
 is among the films selected for the Critics’ Week, "a section that stands out during the Cannes International Film Festival, thanks to its originality and bravery. My film is a film dedicated to all those who live while bravely struggling to assert their 'non-conformist' identity, the victims of a society that is scared of anything different."

Produced by Claudio Saraceni for IdeaCinema, in cooperation with Rai Cinema, and with the participation of the MiBACT and backing from the region of Sicily, the film is distributed by the Istituto Luce Cinecittà. International sales are handled by RAI Trade.

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(Translated from Italian)

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