It’s 20 November 2012 and we’re in Rome. A 15-year-old boy takes his own life off the back of extensive bullying, both at school and online. Twelve years have passed since that first recognised case of teenage suicide caused by cyber-bullying and very little seems to have changed. That teenager was Andrea Spezzacatena, a sunny-natured and happy young man until he was sucked into a cruel spiral of shame and derision on social media, from which he felt there was no escape. The Boy with Pink Trousers [+lee también:
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Presented in a premiere within the Alice Nella Città section of the 19th Rome Film Fest and also set to screen in the upcoming Tallinn Black Nights Festival, The Boy with Pink Trousers focuses more on Andrea’s life than his death. The narrating voice belongs to the protagonist himself (“I’d be 27 now, if…”), who speaks in the first person to share his birth, his happy childhood, his academic successes, his scholarship, his gift for singing and, above all, his close relationship with his loving and empathic mother, Teresa (Claudia Pandolfi). Played by Samuele Carrino, Andrea is a good-natured boy. He’s full of life, intelligent and free-spirited, and he strikes up a friendship with another outsider, Sara (Sara Ciocca), whilst also attaching himself to the most popular boy in school, handsome Christian (Andrea Arru), who’s repeating the year and who asks Andrea to help him with his studies. Sara tries to open Andrea’s eyes to Christian’s ambiguities and to the clear risks posed by the latter’s inconsistencies: sometimes Christian treats Andrea like his best friend, sometimes he derides him. But there’s no demonising in this story; the torturer doesn’t actually seem to understand the harm he’s causing (and, at the time, cyber-bullying wasn’t the known phenomenon it is today).

The authenticity of Andrea’s relationship with Sara and the tension of a looming threat embodied by his male friend, who’s capable of changing personality from one moment to the next, are central to this tale narrating Andrea’s day-to-day life, as he wrestles with his parents’ separation (his father is played by Corrado Fortuna) and the tricky transition to his first year in high school. Full of light against all expectations, and rich in nuance, the movie is based on the book which Andrea’s mother, Teresa Manes, wrote following her son’s death (entitled Andrea oltre il pantalone rosa) when she decided to turn her family’s tragedy into a cautionary tale, to raise awareness of certain warning signs and to prevent others from falling into the same traps. It was only afterwards that Teresa had understood what her son had been going through, when she found a Facebook page entitled “The Boy with Pink Trousers”. The aim of the page was to mock Andrea, purely because the youngster liked wearing trousers which had faded from red to pink following a laundry mishap. And at that age, we all know that “if you feel like a loser, you think you’ll always feel that way”. This film might help countless young people understand that this really isn’t the case.

The Boy with Pink Trousers is produced by Eagle Pictures and Weekend Films.