Fireworks

Giuseppe Fiorello's first film as director follows the relationship between two young men in eighties Sicily. Gianni has grown up on the street and is treated as an outcast; Nino is the son of a family that makes fireworks. They meet, and from the moment the town notices, the film stops being a love story and becomes a siege. It comes from a real case. On 31 October 1980, in the Sicilian town of Giarre, twenty-five-year-old Giorgio Giammona and fifteen-year-old Antonio Galatola, missing for two weeks, were found shot, hand in hand. A note left at the scene, generally assumed to be faked, said they were leaving the world because they could no longer bear these injustices. The case was closed as a suicide pact and nobody has ever been charged. The killing was a turning point in Italy; a month later Arcigay, the country's gay rights organisation, was founded. Fiorello does not reconstruct the case exactly. He starts from it. Who it is for: viewers who like Italian provincial drama and stories drawn from real events. Who it is not for: anyone who will find watching with the ending known too heavy.