“The first time I came to Lucca was in 2018, and at the time I thought it was some kind of carnival with a lot of people wearing strange costumes and things like that,” director Manlio Castagna told Variety. “But when I entered this wonderful walled city, I felt that this was more than just a carnival, it was a place where people could be comfortable with their own identities. Lucca Comics & Games is a place where people can be whatever they want to be. They put on masks to show who they really are.”
Castagna is the director of the new documentary I Love Lucca Comics & Games, a passionate love letter to Europe’s largest comic book convention. For five days, the medieval Italian town in the heart of Tuscany is transformed into a cosplay mecca with autograph signings, artist events, screenings, exhibitions and concerts, with more than 300,000 visitors flocking to the streets and squares.
Castagna’s film uses the metaphor of a mandala to trace the stories of organizers, artists and writers, game designers and filmmakers, and fans and their interactions, building the picture piece by piece.
“This is a movie about community,” Castagna says. “This is a place where bridges are more important than walls. It’s important to show, for example, that gratitude is like the glue between ordinary people, ordinary people in quotes, ordinary people and communities, artists and guests.”
There are shots of fans meeting their favorite artists and writers, and what makes it so moving is that outside of their fanbase, stars of the comic book and gaming scenes may not be household names, so you get a taste of the gratitude fans feel here. Castagna, who discovered a fascinating story among his fans through social media, filmed the entire festival with two camera units. An on-site editing room gave the director access to VIPs and guests at the festival, including best-selling authors R.L. Stine and Licia Troisi, rapper Frankie High-NRG MC, and manga artists Pella Toons, Shio, Yoshitaka Amano, and Roberto Recchio. “The first day was rainy and difficult, but the sun came out for the next few days.”
One of the most moving stories in the film is a portrait of a father and son who bond over their love of geek culture. “I have been attending schools for the past 25 years, as I was the deputy director of the Giffoni Film Festival for children, so I have connected with young people and seen with my own eyes how this culture has changed over the years. When I first started reading comics, the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons was only for a few people. At school, this kind of art was not seen in a very good way. For example, two or three people reading comics. Today, when you go to a classroom, all the kids know about comics, anime, and D&D. Lucca Comic & Games is both a window into this change and a driving force behind it.”
Some of the people featured in Castagna’s documentary had their lives changed by the Lucca experience. They meet their life partners. they come out. They find friendship and community. “In fact, the first title that came to mind during filming was ‘The Happiness Effect’, because Lucca has this kind of effect on its people. Lucca can affect you as a place full of magic, full of incredibly special people. For example, people stand in queues for hours, but they are always happy. There are a lot of people, but you never see conflict or conflict. It’s a great example of how a society can be.”
Returning to the mandala metaphor highlighted in the film, Castagna explains: “Lucca Comics & Games thrives on the collective contribution of thousands of people: organizers, exhibitors, artists and the public. It is a collective ritual, reflecting in its composition the patient construction of the festival itself. But like the mandala, the festival is also destined to dissolve. In the end, all its elements disintegrate into a square. The emptiness returns and the streets regain their rhythm. All that remains is the memory and the anticipation of the next edition, when the design begins to take shape again.”
Lucca Comics & Games runs from October 29th to November 2nd. I Wonder Pictures will release “I Love Lucca Comics & Games” in Italy on November 10th.
