Asia Argento has signed on as executive producer on Rosita Larocca’s directorial debut feature documentary Gia – The Shadow of Beauty, about late U.S. supermodel Gia Carangi (1960–1986). The doc, a U.S.-Italy co-production unveiled earlier this year, approaches her “not as a pop-cultural icon but as a young woman navigating desire, abandonment and visibility in 1980s New York.” With international financing still open, the project is being presented to potential partners at Cannes’ Marché du Film.
“Rejecting the conventions of the celebrity biopic, the film is conceived as a subjective encounter rather than a linear reconstruction of Carangi’s life,” according to a description of the film whose logline is: “This is the story of a girl who only wanted to be seen.” “It reframes her meteoric rise and early death through the lens of an era – and an image-driven industry – ill-equipped to accommodate vulnerability, queerness and contradiction.”
