Fireworks: Two Boys Shot Dead After Loving Each Other

“For Toni and Giorgio, who were shot on Sicily in 1980 because they loved each other”: The dedication at the end of the sunlit film “Fireworks” by Giuseppe Fiorello, released in 2023, is shocking.

BR Fernsehen (the Third Channel of Bavarian Broadcasting) airs the poignant love story of two teenage boys in the late-night schedule on Thursday at 11:15 p.m. Afterward, the film remains available for 30 days in the ARD Mediathek as part of the BR QUEER series.

What happens in “Fireworks”

Two teenagers meet in the early 80s when they crash their mopeds on a country road. To make amends for the accident, one boy offers the other a job with his father, who runs fireworks displays. From the friendship of Nino and Gianni grows a romantic affair that they want to live without fear. But when the conservative and anxious families learn of the relationship, hell breaks loose.
The film is based on a real crime that occurred in October 1980 in Sicily. It is known in Italy as the “Delitto di Giarre” (Murder of Giarre). Giarre is a town on the eastern slope of Mount Etna, near Catania. Following the crime, Italian public opinion was forced to confront the discrimination of homosexuals and the hidden hatred toward gay people.
The crime against two loving young men, apparently carried out at the behest of the families (the perpetrator was never definitively identified), led to the founding of the organization Arcigay, a still-important LGBTQ civil rights group.
The film relocates the action to 1982, during the World Cup era when Italy defeated Germany in the final. In doing so, it also examines machismo, patriotism, and a pretend sense of unity.

What the film is really about

Even though the movie is set in early-1980s Italy, it speaks to audiences beyond that setting. It resonates with at least one earlier Germany and broad sections of today’s world, regardless of whether a culture is strictly Catholic, Islamic, or otherwise heteronormative. The hostility toward sex and homosexuality displayed by Nino’s parents is framed as a fear of the unfamiliar and the evil.
With the presumed lover of the 16-year-old, the devil enters the house, the mother proclaims to her son Nino, full of fear. If he has this unspeakable inclination, then he is a pig, says the father. And the crucial question from anxious, disgusted parents: “Has something happened or not?” In the process, the mother and father had previously seemed loving in the film.
These characters in the film are especially interesting
Rumors swirl around the boy Gianni, and a narrow-minded village community has nothing better to do than bully him after he is seen engaging in intimate acts with a man.
Gianni’s mother Lina, involved with a violent man who hates his stepson, fears another scandal around her son. She is herself a victim—of the upbringing, a brutal code of masculinity, and the prevailing morality that appears stronger than a mother’s love for her child.
A small glimmer of hope in Nino’s family comes from an uncle, where closeness between two boys does not only trigger suspicion. He advises, drawing on his own experiences, to live as he believes is right, while remaining as discreet as possible. But as is well known, discretion doesn’t necessarily help.

What makes the film worth watching
The Italian feature is a superb piece of storytelling cinema and a richly drawn portrait of social mores. Despite its deadly tragedy, it remains ultimately life-affirming. It portrays, in sensuous and beautifully shot detail, a cautiously unfolding romance (original title: Stranizza d’amuri; roughly “The Oddity of Love”).
Viewers are kept in a state of uneasy certainty for a long time, convinced that everything will turn out okay in the end. The film’s bittersweet score by Franco Battiato contributes to this effect.
In a pivotal scene, Gianni and his mother share a kitchen dance, during which the song “Il mio mondo” by Umberto Bindi plays. There is also an English version “You’re My World” and the German version “Meine Welt bist du.”