“I first came to Lucca in 2018, and I thought at the time, it was a sort of a carnival with a lot of people with strange costumes and stuff like that,” film director Manlio Castagna tells Variety. “But when I entered this incredible walled city, I had the feeling it was not just a carnival, but a place where people could be happy with their identities. Lucca Comics & Games is a place where people can be whatever they want to be. They put on masks to show their true selves.”
Castagna is the director of the new documentary “I Love Lucca Comics & Games,” a passionate love letter to the biggest comic convention in Europe. For five days, the medieval Italian town in the heart of Tuscany is transformed into a Cosplay Mecca, with book signings, artist events, screenings, exhibitions and concerts with over 300,000 visitors flooding onto the streets and piazzas.
Using the metaphor of the Mandala, Castagna’s film builds a picture gradually piece by piece following the stories of the organizers, the artists and writers, the game designers and film directors, and the fans and how they interact.
“This is a movie about communities,” Castagna says. “It’s a place where bridges are more important than walls. It’s important to show how gratitude, for example, is a sort of a glue between normal people, normal in quotation marks, normal people and the community and the artist, the guest.”
There are shots of fans meeting their favorite artists and writers, and what makes it moving is that outside their fandom the stars of the comic book or gaming scene might not be household names and so here they get a taste of the appreciation the fans feel. Having found compelling stories among the fans via social media, Castagna shot throughout the festival with two camera units. An editing bay was made available on site and the festival gave the director access to the VIPs and guests such as the best-selling authors R. L. Stine and Licia Troisi, the rapper Frankie Hi-NRG MC and the comic book artists Pera Toons, Sio, Yoshitaka Amano and Roberto Recchio. “The first day we had a lot of rain and it was difficult but then the sun came out for the following days.”
One of the most moving stories in the film is the portrait of a father and son bonding over their love of geek culture. “I’ve been going into schools for the last 25 years because I was the vice director of the Giffoni Film Festival for kids. So I connect with the young people, and I’ve seen with my own eyes, how this culture has changed over the years. At the beginning, when I started reading comics, Dungeons & Dragons, the role playing game, was only for a niche of people. In the schools, this kind of art was not seen in a very good way. For example, the two or three kids reading manga would get bullied. Now it’s totally the opposite when I go into the classrooms, all the kids know about this: manga, anime, and D&D. Lucca Comics & Games is a window to see this change, but at the same time it’s the engine of this transformation.”
Some of the people included in Castagna’s documentary have their lives transformed by the experience of Lucca. They meet their life partners; they come out; they find friendship and a community. “In fact, the first title that popped up in my mind when I was filming was ‘The Happiness Effect,’ because Lucca has this kind of effect on people. Lucca can affect you as a place full of magic and full of these incredible, special people. For example, people are in the lines for hours and hours, and they are always happy. There are a lot of people, and we never see fighting, or conflict. It’s a wonderful example of how society can be.”
Coming back to the metaphor of the Mandala highlighted in the film, Castagna explains: “Lucca Comics & Games flourishes from the collective contribution of thousands of people: organizers, exhibitors, artists and the public. It is a collective ritual that, in its composition, reflects the patient construction of the festival itself. But, like the Mandala, the festival is also destined to dissolve. At the end, every element is dismantled, the squares return to emptiness, and the streets resume their rhythm. Nothing remains but the memory and the anticipation of the next edition, when the design can begin to take shape again.”
Lucca Comics & Games takes place from Oct. 29 to Nov. 2. I Wonder Pictures releases “I Love Lucca Comics & Games” in Italy on Nov. 10.
