Screening of “Billi il Cowboy”

A short film by Fede Gianni, NYU Florence, followed by a conversation with the director and Scott Palmer, NYU Florence.

It is the late 1960s, and in the Roman countryside, next to the construction sites of the burgeoning working-class suburbs, dozens of western films were being shot. Billi is twelve years old; she rides horses and dreams of being a cowboy. When a casting agent shows up looking for young extras to do some stunt work, Billi knows this is her big chance. Her family, however, thinks otherwise.
(Drama, 15’, Italy, 2024)

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

Cowboy Billi is about a precise moment in life: the end of childhood. Most children leave certain things behind and gain others, but for Billi, a kid whose true gender identity has lived safely inside the game of ‘playing cowboy,’ growing up threatens to take away a large part of who this kid is. Moving beyond the binary of conforming or rebelling, the film sets out to show the power of a free spirit and of self-determination.