Directed by: Giorgio Diritti, Stars Elio Germano, 120 min.(Berlinale 2020: Competition – Silver Bear for Best Actor (Elio Germano), EFA – European Film Awards 2020: Nomination for European Actor (Elio Germano), Excellence Awards for European Cinematography, European Costume Design, Globi d’Oro 2020: Best Film, Best Cinematography)
Toni is the son of an emigrant Italian mother. He is deported back to Italy from Switzerland where he spent his childhood and where he lived for many years in a shack by the river without ever succumbing to loneliness, to the cold or to hunger.
Meeting the sculptor Renato Marino Mazzacurati was his opportunity to return to painting. This is the beginning of a redemption story in which he feels that art is the only way to form his identity and a real chance to make his name known and loved by the world.
“El Tudesc,” as people called him, was a lonely, scrawny, ugly and often mocked and humiliated man. He became an imaginative artist who painted a fantasy world of tigers, gorillas and jaguars on the banks of the Po. Ligabue’s art is a “fairy tale” from which a wealth of diversity emerges and his work over time has proved to be a gift to collective humanity.