IT
| Original Title | Unicorni |
|---|---|
| Italian Title | Unicorni |
| English Title | Unicorns |
| Section | |
| Movie Type | |
| Genre | |
| Country | Italy |
| Production Year | 2025 |
| Director | |
| Screenplay | |
| Cast | Daniele Scardini, Donatella Finocchiaro, Edoardo Pesce, Federica Victoria Caiozzo aka Thony, Lino Musella, Paola Tiziana Cruciani, Valentina Lodovini |
| Director of Photography | |
| Editor | |
| Production Designer | Mauro Vanzati |
| Costume Designer | Lavinia Bonsignore |
| Music | Andrea Guerra |
| Produced by | Antonia Nava, Arturo Paglia, Isabella Cocuzza |
UNICORNS | UNICORNI
Lucio, a radio host who likes to show off his progressive views, is plunged into crisis when his nine-year-old son Blue declares that he no longer wants to be a boy. The man’s flaunted open-mindedness proves to be a fragile façade and Lucio turns out to be more conservative than he could have imagined, even more so than his boorish friend Stefano. Finding himself at odds also with his wife, who accepts their son’s choice, Lucio embarks on a journey of change to become a better father.
Category: Premiere Tag: Out of Competition
Michela Andreozzi began her career in television as a writer and editor, later forming the comedy duo Gretel & Gretel. She then established herself as a comedic actress on TV (COLORADO, series like DISTRETTO DI POLIZIA), in theater, and in film, debuting in BASILICATA COAST TO COAST.
As a screenwriter, she penned films such as PANE E BURLESQUE and SCONNESSI. Her directorial career includes the short film D.U.G.U. DIETRO UN GRANDE UOMO and feature films NOVE LUNE E MEZZA, BRAVE RAGAZZE, GENITORI VS INFLUENCER, UNA GRAN VOGLIA DI VIVERE, and the recent hit PENSATI SEXY. She also co-directed the Netflix series GUIDA ASTROLOGICA PER CUORI INFRANTI. Andreozzi has also published the book Non me lo chiedete più.
Director's Note
For several years now, I’ve been working on the project UNICORNS, a theme that has always profoundly affected me: the search for gender identity, to explore how the revolution of an individual is a revolution for their entire environment. My curiosity arose when the topic of transition, relatively new but for a long time the prerogative of a few — and often marginalized — began to enter our daily lives, forcing us to ask questions about our open-mindedness, our sense of democracy, our acceptance of others, and finally, about our own identity: are we who we want to be? What we think we are? Are we that person capable of welcoming and supporting a change that inevitably changes us?
I wondered: what would happen in a family like mine (bourgeois, urban, educated: it’s no coincidence the protagonist shares my brother’s name) if their only child, a 9-year-old boy (not yet at puberty), suddenly declared he “feels like a girl” and began to strongly express the desire to leave the house in feminine clothes? To develop the project, I worked with Alessia Crocini, screenwriter (also for NOVE LUNE E MEZZA), copywriter, gay activist, mother, and president of Famiglie Arcobaleno, and Tommaso Triolo, screenwriter for L’ESTATE PIÙ CALDA. This is how UNICORNS was born.
More than the story of a child in transformation (which usually happens later, at pubertal age, when the issue of development arises), it is the narrative of the emotional bomb that the first manifestation of gender dysphoria can trigger in a seemingly progressive family and in everyone around them.
UNICORNS is the story of Lucio, a radio host known for his cynicism; of Elena, his beautiful yet insecure trophy wife; and of their 9-year-old son, Blu, who for the first time feels within himself that he is a girl. And it is the story of their approach to group therapy with the “Unicorn Parents” and the psychologist who follows him, Dr. Vittoria, a transgender woman with a difficult past to bear. It’s the story of all the families participating in the same therapy, so different from each other that they have nothing in common except the difficulty of being fathers and mothers to non-binary children, which in turn becomes a family. It is a coming-of-age story about education, information, the struggle of being parents, children, of keeping up with modern, overwhelming and confusing times. It is the story of a collective education to change that has to pass through self-awareness. And it is the story of Blu who wants to play the Little Mermaid in the end-of-year play, and how he will be able to do it with everyone’s help.