The Boy with Pink Pants

Rome, the early 2010s. Andrea is a sensitive, funny boy with a beautiful singing voice, good enough to be chosen for the papal choir. He lives with his mother Teresa, his father and his little brother, and at school he wants what every teenager wants: friends, and to belong. He becomes close to Christian, an older classmate, and to Sara, a girl who understands him. Then one day his mother buys him a pair of red trousers that turn pink in the wash. Andrea wears them anyway, proudly. For his classmates, it is the perfect excuse.

Margherita Ferri tells the true story of Andrea Spezzacatena, the fifteen-year-old whose death in 2012 was the first case in Italy to be publicly linked to bullying and cyberbullying. The film is based on the book by his mother, and it is told with great tenderness: it lets us spend time with Andrea as a whole person, his humour, his music, his loyalty, before it shows us what was done to him. Samuele Carrino is touching and natural as Andrea, and Claudia Pandolfi is heartbreaking as Teresa, a mother who sees her son changing and cannot reach what is hurting him.

It is not a subtle film, and it does not want to be. It was made to be seen by teenagers, parents and teachers, and in Italy it became a phenomenon, screened in schools across the country. But it never feels like a lecture. The cruelty is shown clearly but without exploitation, and the warmth of the family makes the loss even harder to bear. Painful, important and very moving.