ARIA, the debut film by director Valerio D'Annunzio, will be in theaters from March 20, 2009.
Roberto Herlitzka, Agnese Nano, Olivia Magnani, and Galatea Ranzi are the main characters, the soundtrack was created by the composer and pianist Giovanni Allevi.
Produced by LA BEFFA PRODUZIONI srl (an Abruzzo-based company that operates nationally in the film and television fields) and distributed by GIOMETTI spa, ARIA is a film that the director approaches with the intensity and lightness of an everyday story. the theme of sexual identity and the confrontation with the “different”.
«"For me, ARIA is more than a film," says Valerio D'Annunzio. "It's a gamble, a leap without a parachute, undertaken with the recklessness and passion that characterizes every beginning. An exciting and difficult journey, shared with all those who fought and believed in the film. A unique and controversial journey that, in retrospect, fascinates and amazes me, regardless of the objective outcome, which, after all, is not for me to judge.".
AIR is the story of a man born in the wrong body, a man who will bring to life the atrocity and poetry of the clash and confrontation with the ambivalence of his nature: male in body and female in soul.
The protagonist (Roberto Herlitzka), gifted with great strength and a marked artistic sensitivity, while fulfilling his father's expectations, will succeed in fulfilling his gift, becoming a pianist. His story is a parable of rebirth and atonement, it is an act of accusation and revelation towards a world made of black and white, where the nuances of another reality, sensitive and light, are obliterated in the name of a normality that is merely an inability to see beyond the appearance of social conventions. Where the fear of confrontation with what might distance us from the reassuring and rusty path of the everyday, of the conventional, leads to the estrangement and destruction of the other, of the "different.".
A film that addresses the theme of diversity, choosing just one of its infinite manifestations to prompt the viewer to reflect on the narrow-mindedness of a priori and prejudicial condemnation. It's all approached with the intensity and lightness of a daily story born from encounters with real trans people who have experienced the protagonist's ordeal firsthand.