Luca Guadagnino on Producing Margherita Giusti’s Venice Horizons Animation Short ‘The Meatseller’

variety.com:

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Luca Guadagnino, whose Zendaya-starrer “Challengers” was pulled as Venice Film Festival opener due to complications from the SAG-AFTRA strike, is on the Lido wearing his producer hat on several films.

One, especially close to his heart, is animation short “The Meatseller” by debuting director Margherita Giusti. The 17-minute piece, which uses hand-drawn imagery, is inspired by the real-life story of Selinna Ajamikoko, a young Nigerian woman who now lives in Italy after leaving her native country as a 15-year-old and embarking on an infernal two-year journey across Africa and the Mediterranean to get to Europe. “The Meatseller” screens in Venice’s Horizons section.

Giusti, who is a graduate of Italy’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia film school, came across Ajamikoko’s story when she interviewed her while searching for a strong female empowerment story to put on screen. “She was the first interview I did,” Giusti recalls, noting that she became fascinated by the fact that Ajamikoko worked in Italy as a butcher, following in the footsteps of her mother who is also a meat seller in the village they come from in Nigeria.

She had gone through her harrowing odyssey from Nigeria to Italy to accomplish her dream of becoming a meat seller like her mom, albeit in a wealthier world.