24/04/2025 - The Italian-British co-production directed by Flaminia Graziadei sees Melanie Liburd and Nina Pons playing two fashion designers drawn into an intense love story

Actresses Melanie Liburd (© zuko1312) and Nina Pons (© e-talenta)

Filming has kicked off in Rome on Flaminia Graziadei’s A Year in London, which is her second work after her 2001 debut with the animated movie Momo, the Conquest of Time, co-directed by Enzo D'Alò. Graziadei also has a series of short films, adverts, TV series and web series under her belt in her capacity as a producer and a director. 

Shooting on this movie, which is being produced by Orange Pictures and Rain Dogs in Italy and by Graziadei’s LonRom Film Production in the UK, with backing from the Italian Ministry for Culture, will unfold across a four-week period between London and Rome before wrapping in Basilicata.

A Year in London tells the story of the love between a successful London-based fashion designer and a talented Italian woman, respectively played by British actress Melanie Liburd and Italy’s Nina Pons. Liburd is known for her role in the NBC series This Is Us (2018-2021), the crime drama Starz Power Book II: Ghost and, more recently, the HBO series The Idol, while her big screen credits include a lead role in the feminist horror film Perpetrator [+see also:
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Written by the director in league with Laura Jane Swain, A Year in London tackles themes along the lines of inclusivity, sustainability and the gender fluidity of designers emerging from the fashion revolution, shining a light on the contrast between southern Italian culture and progressive attitudes in London. Olivia is one such young fashion designer from a small town in the Italian South, who’s engaged and closely affiliated with her family’s traditional tailoring business. She moves to London for a year to study at a prominent fashion university. Her aim is to refine the techniques she’s learned from her father, who’s a tailor with three generations of traditions behind him, but this experience abroad proves overwhelming, leading her to make some radical changes in her life. Olivia is transfixed by the charisma of her mentor - the famous fashion designer Nina Clark who’s black and gay and proud - and ends up caught in a vortex of unfamiliar feelings. But then, one evening, Olivia and Nina find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and are involved in a terrorist attack. Their shared near-death experience works to create a special bond between them. Usually detached, reluctant to forge ties and guided by unshakeable ethics when it comes to setting boundaries in her relationships with students, Nina is intrigued by the refreshing spontaneity of Olivia’s approach, not to mention her vision of sustainability and gender fluidity in fashion. Their shared commitment to making the fashion industry more inclusive of diversity and more sustainable becomes the fertile ground in which their mutual feelings grow. But Nina is adamant that the boundaries of their relationship stay within the ethical limits of mentor and student. At least, that’s how it seems…

(Translated from Italian)