Hailed by Variety as “a strikingly presented debut,” Carlo Lavagna’s Arianna is a visionary film about an intersex post-adolescent (played by the ravishing Ondina Quadri), who returns to her childhood home after many years. Through the course of a sensual and heat-drenched summer, Arianna is haunted by the intuition that she grew up as a young boy. Her painful inner journey will bring her to realize that her parents performed a sex-change surgery on her when she was three and never told her. The emerging Carlo Lavagna seems to be a valid new addition to the fervid Italian film renaissance that has been sweeping up the country with talents like Luca Guadagnino, Matteo Garrone, and Paolo Sorrentino. The film, produced by Tommaso Bertani’s Ring Film and co-written with screenwriters Carlo Salsa and Document Journal contributor, Chiara Barzini, won two important awards in Venice Days (Best Italian Discovery and Best Young Best Young Actress to Ondina Quadri.) As a few magazines have pointed out, the screenplay does not shy away from gracefully representing various stages of sexuality and intuition, but neither does the cast. All the young actors in Arianna seem to be immersed in a state of grace, perfectly living up to Lavagna’s penetrating and intimate cinematographic style, enhanced by cinematographer Hélène Louvart’s talent (Pina, Le Meraviglie) and Emanuele De Raymondi’s powerful soundtrack. During the shoot, most of the cast lived and slept in the hauntingly beautiful house where the film takes place, and the line between reality and fiction is quite often blurred to the film’s advantage. Arianna has received the endorsement of ILGA (The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association) and we are sure it will strike an important chord in the LGBTQ community world-wide.