
Diva Futura
Direction: Giulia Louise Steigerwalt
Plot. Italy, 1980s–1990s. With his agency Diva Futura, Riccardo Schicchi revolutionises mass culture by turning the hippie utopia of free love into a new phenomenon: porn. Under his guidance, “girls next door” Ilona Staller, Moana Pozzi, Eva Henger and many others suddenly become world-famous stars and enter Italian homes thanks to the boom of private TVs and VCRs. “Pornstar,” a word coined at the time, marks the beginning of a new era. The media impact is so overwhelming that it leads to the election to Parliament of Ilona Staller, known as “Cicciolina,” the birth of the Partito dell’Amore, and Moana Pozzi’s running for mayor of Rome. The adventure of this big “family”—which sets off jealousies, ordeals and contradictions that leave the pornography industry in shambles—is told through the eyes of Debora, a young secretary at the agency with a mortgage to worry about. All this happened because of desires as private as they were widespread: the ones everybody had.

