Cinema: Crialese comes out as trans man at Venice film fest

(ANSA) - ROME, SEP 5 - Italian film director Emanuele Crialese came out as a trans man as he presented his new film L'Immensità at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday - although he stressed he had never been in the closet about his sexual identity.
    Crialese said he had been born as a girl, Emanuela, in Rome 57 years ago.
    L'Immensità stars Penelop Cruz as a mother and Luana Giuliani as her 12-year-old daughter who refuses her sexual identity just as Crialese did.
    Crialese did not go into detail about his transition to a man but did say the film was deeply autobiographical.
    "It's the film of my life, and I got into cinema for this too, but if I had done so as my first film it would have been really boring, and preachy, it would have been the story of a wretch who goes through a gender crisis, and now I'm aware of how you have to recount these things when you know how to speak," Crialese told ANSA in an interview.
    Speaking of his own experience as a "rebirth", he went on: "it may take you a lifetime to recount yourself as you are, but you have to believe in yourself as you are".
    He chafed at the idea of the film being his coming out, saying "I have always been out, I'm not a rock star, why would people care about me, but it's a film that concerns me very closely, it tells my childhood in a very poetic way, there is not transformation or transition, that would be disinformation".
    He added: "today kids are very different, they use terms like gender fluid for example," but it was very different back in 1970s Rome".
    L'Immensità is one of five Italian films bidding for the Golden Lion at the 79th Venice Film Festival, which runs from August 31 to September 10.
    The others are Il Signore delle Formiche (The Lord of the Ants) by Gianni Amelio, Bones and All by Luca Guadagnino, Chiara by Susanna Nicchiarelli, and Monica by Andrea Pallaoro. (ANSA).