The world premiere of Nico, 1988 directed by Susanna Nicchiarelli, and starring Trine Dyrholm (Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival in 2016) will be the opening film of the Orizzonti section of the 74th Venice International Film Festival.

Set between Paris, Prague, Nuremberg, Manchester, the Polish countryside and the Roman seaside, Nico, 1988 is a road-movie dedicated to the last years of Christa Päffgen, known by her stage name “Nico”. One of Warhol’s muses, the singer of the Velvet Underground and a woman of legendary beauty, Nico lived a second life after the story known to all, when she began her career as a solo artist. Her music is among the most original of the Seventies and Eighties, and has influenced much of the musical production that followed. The “priestess of darkness”, as she was called, found her true calling after age forty, when she shook off the weight of her beauty and rebuilt her relationship with her only forgotten son. Nico, 1988 is the story of Nico’s last tour with the band that accompanied her around Europe in the Eighties. It is the story of a rebirth, an artist, a mother, the woman beyond the icon.

The director Susanna Nicchiarelli explains: “This is the story of Nico after Nico. People usually talk about her only in relation to the men she was with when she was young: Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, Alain Delon, Iggy Pop. I once read in an interview that “at age 34 Nico was finished”. That’s not true. After her experience with the Velvet Underground, Nico became a great musician. I wanted to tell the story of her journey from a different point of view and focusing on the loss of consensus and the change in her image that both gave her back her freedom”.