Oliviero Toscani is an Italian Photographer, well known for his provocative Benetton ad campaign in the 1980s and nineties. Toscani was invited, in 2001, to curate (a part of?) the new Biennale in Tirana, at a time when Albania just came out of a state of isolation. The organiser, however, didn't have any direct personal contact with Toscani but communicated via email (also a new thing and easily subverted at the time) with him - well, it wasn't really Toscani himself, rather somebody who curated for the Biennale four very controversial artists, one of them a pedophile, another one an Al Quaida fighter. The film is a documentary about this hoax. Apparently there were legal proceedings that stopped the parts filmed for the documentary at the time from being published for 20+ years. Actually the terrorist attack against the World Trade Center happened very shortly after the opening of the Biennale, and nobody wanted to be associated with Al Quaida, or, of course, pedophilia.
Anyway, in 2024/25 we get this nice little film showing some background but also in some ways contributing to the hoax. The viewer, in the end, will not be sure about everything, and what is real and what not so much is part of the attraction of it.
This was surely entertaining (a bit of familiarity with the world of modern art helps) and I liked the Toscani character. Chances are there is also some kind of art philosophical side to it, what can art do and how does it interact with reality? This, however, is a bit dated. Not sure whether art has moved on from this kind of "happening", but such things, and the associated thoughts about art, existed long before 2000 and much longer before 2025. So don't expect innovation and exciting new points of view here, despite its connection to pedophilia, porn, and terrorism. Anyway, it's not the worst way to spend your time.
