Nico, 1988

fiction / 2017 / Italy, Belgium / col. / 93 min.

Director: Susanna Nicchiarelli
Screenplay: Susanna Nicchiarelli
Photography: Crystel Fournier
Editor: Stefano Cravero
Music: Gatto Ciliegia Contro il Grande Freddo
Cast: Trine Dyrholm, John Gordon Sinclair, Anamaria Marinca, Sandor Funtek, Calvin Demba, Thomas Trabacchi, Karina Fernandez, Francesco Corella, Matt Patresi

Please don’t call her Nico or “Andy Warhol’s muse”. And Christa Päffgen doesn’t want to talk about her brief period with The Velvet Underground some two decades later. For her, life started only after that illustrious period, even though reporters and admirers are generally less interested in her own solo career or ideas... The biopic Nico, 1988 follows Nico/Christa in the last two years of her life, during international performances – occasionally phenomenal, sometimes embarrassing – while she tries to build a bond with her suicidal son and openly shoots up heroin as a pick-me-up. Susanna Nicchiarelli does not condemn her, nor does she romanticise her. She makes her hard, yet also vulnerable; occasionally regrettable, but never pitiful. (source: Rotterdam IFF)