One of the founders of the Italian Homosexual Liberation Movement, created at the beginning of the 1970s, Mario Mieli was an activist, intellectual, writer, performer and a key figure on the Italian cultural scene.
Though he committed suicide at the age of thirty, he lived a busy and full life, leaving an impression on LGBTQ culture in Italy together with his friends like architect Corrado Levi, painter Piero Fassoni, singer Ivan Cattaneo, activist Angelo Pezzana, writer Fernanda Pivano and poet Milo De Angelis.
Starring Nicola Di Benedetto in the lead role, Bitter Years traces the ups and downs of Mieli’s short, but influential life. According to Andrea Adriatico, the film’s director, “He liked to provoke and to be an innovator but, today, his thought has been completely forgotten.”
“A son of the upper middle class and second to last of seven children, he spent an entire life having a complicated relationship with his parents, Water and Liderica, and the last years of his life were spent with his lover Umberto Pasti, in a very difficult and intense love story.”
Watch the trailer for Bitter Years below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.
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