Michela Giraud: «With Flaminia I give voice to diversity and disability»

Many will remember her for her participation in LOL Whoever laughs is out in 2021 and 2022; others for that The truth, I swear! broadcast on Netflix which is, in some way, the starting point for this, his first film as a director, Flaminia, already in the room. She, Michela Giraudhas a highly respected past as a stand-up comedian which he has always used with irony and sarcasm to dismantle clichés.

Rita Abela is Flaminia in Michela Giraud’s film

With Flaminia she tells, as she herself says, “the closest thing to who I am in life”. Her sister inspired her Christina who in the film becomes the protagonist played by Rita Abela.

«I wanted to make a film that spoke to kids my age – he explains Giraud referring to the “kids of ’87” -, because no one gives a shit. I wanted to talk about the topic of disability (sister’s autism, ed.) and diversity. And then I wanted to take the piss out of my neighborhood (Northern Rome, ed.).”

His story crosses that of Cristina, the director’s sister

The story of Flaminia crosses that of Christina although Michela Giraud He is keen to underline that «I already had Cristina. And I knew that it risked devouring Rita on an emotional level, because my sister is truly a storm of love, of suffering, of paraculism, of anger. I took her fairy-tale aspect from her.”

And he immediately adds: «I come from Northern Rome which is a symbolic place: it identifies a bourgeoisie that is not attentive to diversity. My sister and I, especially when I went to the beach, were not very welcomed. I suffered from this, but I was never ashamed of her: I proudly always took my sister everywhere. But I struggled: when you are 12 years old and a bag of fava beans who at most used Topexan, not like today when at 13 years old they do skincare, it was more difficult. We always went everywhere.”

Also in the cast is the latest participation of Andrea Purgatori

As Christina becomes Flaminia and enter the cinematic world. Beyond Rita Abelathe cast also sees, among others Lucrezia Lante della Rovere, Antonello Fassari And Andrea Purgatori (in his last participation) with his son Edward precisely in the roles of father and son.

The story of Flaminia

In the movie Flaminia De Angelis is everything a girl from Northern Rome should be: smiling, obsessed with physical fitness, rich or rather enriched. Under pressure from her mother Francesca, she is about to marry Alberto, the gifting son of an important diplomat. But when Ludovica, her half-sister, enters her life, she will lay bare all the hypocrisies that Flaminia thought she could live with very well.

PATRIZIA PERTUSO