The 38th Lovers Film Festival, directed by Vladimir Luxuria, which will take place from 18th to 23rd April 2023 at Cinema Massimo, will pay tribute to Maurizio Costanzo, a few months after his death, with the screening of a masterpiece for which he signed the screenplay: Una giornata particolare (1977) directed by Ettore Scola and starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni.
The film, which earned 2 Oscar nominations and won 3 Nastri d’Argento, 2 David di Donatello and an award at the Golden Globes, is set in Fascist Rome in 1938. The city is celebrating the arrival of the Führer on a visit to the Duce, and in a council house Antonietta, wracked by pregnancies and fatigue, opens the cage of the blackbird that goes to lean on the windowsill of an apartment opposite to hers. It’s that of Gabriele, a former EIAR announcer who is packing his suitcase waiting to go into confinement because he is a homosexual. As the radio continues to broadcast the report of the meeting between Hitler and Mussolini, Antoinetta and Gabriele will mirror each other.
‘I owe Maurizio Costanzo a lot, indeed a whole lot – commented Vladimir Luxuria – and I would like to use the plural. We owe him a lot. Because he was the first, in unsuspected times, to talk about difficult topics such as homophobia, homosexuality and gender identity as in my case, in tv and mass media. He often invited me to his talk shows where I also went with my mother. But we also owe him recognition and gratitude for having written the screenplay for one of the most beautiful films in the history of Italian cinema: Una giornata particolare, a film that is still very relevant and deals with the theme of censorship and poetically describe two solitudes that meet’.
The Lovers Film Festival is powered by the National Museum of Cinema and takes place with the contribution of the MiC, the Regione Piemonte and the City of Turin.
