If statues could talk, what stories would they tell? Massimiliano Finazzer Flory is a gifted playwright, director and actor who has been promoting Italian culture in the US for years. His new short film Ali Dorate – Golden Wings – filmed in a city under lockdown, animates public statues across Milan during the tragic days when the coronavirus rendered the fast-paced metropolis silent and paradoxically even more beautiful. Nineteen monumental and beloved sculptures became the protagonists of the story.

Finazzer Flory, born in 1964, in Monfalcone in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region near the Gulf of Trieste, made his acting debut in Milan with leading roles in Viaggio con Virgilio and L’Altro Viaggio di Maria Rilke, both staged in 2005 at Il Piccolo Teatro di Milano.