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RIGA IFF 2021 | 14 – 24 October Tickets and info: Tadzio’s accursedly beautiful face evokes the sublime grace of ancient Greek sculptures, writes Thomas Mann. In 1970, in preparation for the screen adaptation of “Death in Venice”, director Luchino Visconti travelled to several European countries in search of this “face”. He found the transcendent beauty he was looking for in a boy with eyes the colour of the grey waters of the canals in Venice, at a casting in Sweden. The shy Björn Andrésen was 15 years old at the time. At the film’s premiere in London in 1971, Visconti calls Björn the most beautiful boy in the world, idolising him in the same way that the film’s protagonist, Gustav von Aschenbach does Tadzio. Half a century after the film was made, the greying Björn still lives in Stockholm and carries a few film roles, depression and the burden of trauma with him. This cinematic portrait by Swedish documentary directors and and journalists Kristina
