Nico is remembered for her time with the Velvet Underground, as well as her association with Andy Warhol. Now, she is being remembered for the years after, in her own biopic “NICO, 1988.”
The new film, which has screened at the Venice Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival, focuses on a drug-addicted Nico who is touring as a solo artist at the age of 48. “The entire film is constructed following the inspiration of Nico’s music: her performances and the lyrics of her songs,” the director, Susanna Nicchiarelli, said, according to a 2016 Rolling Stone article, “It will tell us more than any other dialogue or situation in the film.”
Nicchiarelli, also stated, “The entire film is constructed following the inspiration of Nico’s music: her performances and the lyrics of her songs,” the director said. “It will tell us more than any other dialogue or situation in the film.”
The screenplay is based on interviews with both Ari and Nico’s then-manager Alan Wise and is written and directed by Nicchiarelli. The film stars Trine Dyrholm (Nico), John Gordon Sinclair (Richard), Anamaria Marinca (Sylvia), Sandor Funtek (Ari).
“NICO, 1988” is getting a US release thanks to Film Forum starting on August 1
You can read the official synopsis and watch the trailer below:
Perhaps you weren’t around when Nico sang with Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground during the ‘60s, and maybe you missed the acclaimed documentary on the dazzling blonde chanteuse, NICO ICON (which Film Forum premiered in 1996). Now you can catch up with her in this riveting drama, written and directed by Italian filmmaker Susanna Nicchiarelli (COSMONAUT). It tracks Nico in her final years (1986-88) as she performs in black leather leggings and boots on a ramshackle tour throughout Europe, her entourage a bevy of sycophants who want to hear about the glory years she’s desperate to flee, as she rebuilds her relationship with her neglected, only son, Ari. Still very much “the priestess of darkness,” her smoky, heroin-infused voice is brilliantly re-created by Danish actress Trine Dyrholm (THE COMMUNE, the Academy Award-winning IN A BETTER WORLD), in this story of counterculture dystopia gone to seed.