Italiano
Life Is (Not) a Game by Antonio Valerio Spera will be released in Italian cinemas on Thursday, February 2nd, 2023. The film was presented in the programme of the 17th Rome Film Fest.
LIFE IS (NOT) A GAME
Director
Antonio Valerio Spera
Nation
Italy
Year
2022
Duration
83′
Cast
Laika
Two years of our recent history told through the eyes of Laika, the Roman street artist whose real identity is unknown. The pandemic gathers steam, as the virus and its fallout on society become recurring themes in the artist’s work. But when the lockdown is over and the world still lives in fear of Covid-19, Laika undertakes a journey to the Balkans to give voices and faces to the world of the “invisibles”.
COMMENTARY
Donning a white mask and a bright red wig, her voice altered by a device, Laika (who took her moniker from the dog who spacetraveled in the Soviets’ Sputnik) has splashed the walls of Rome with posters and murals in the last two pandemic years. The images scream all of her civic indignation and include her best-known, the embrace between Giulio Regeni and Patrick Zaki. Two years of the mysterious street artist’s social causes are tracked by Antonio Valerio Spera’s camera in the dead of night, and Spera throws in fragments of Laika’s videos, interviews with recipients of her messages, archival material on hot topics of interest to the artist, and naturally, her works as well, serving up a spicy pop culture brew. It’s all to revisit our last two years through the eyes and talent of a woman who calls herself a “Roman poster gluer” and displays a profound moral and artistic sensibility.
ANTONIO VALERIO SPERA
Antonio Valerio Spera is a journalist, essayist, cultural promoter, and university teacher. From 2012 to 2016, he taught photography design and history of fashion and cinema at the l’Università Telematica San Raffaele in Rome. Since 2017, he has taught cinema and sport at Rome’s University of Tor Vergata. Parallel to his academic career, Spera also works as a journalist and film critic. Life Is (Not) a Game marks his directorial debut.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Life Is (Not) a Game is my directorial debut. Looking at Laika’s art on the walls of Roman buildings, I instantly sensed an attitude behind her style that perfectly matched my own way of understanding art: simplicity, direct messages, a subtle irony, and all of it with an underlying and all-important critique of society. I was also fascinated by her being anonymous, and her look: a people’s superhero. And it occurred to me that Laika could well be a very intriguing film personality and the perfect lead character for a film narrative about our times. I felt the need to use Laika as a filter for a rumination on the contemporary era.
