Marco

Marco is a 33 years old bright young man. He lives in Rome, he’s a star swimmer, he likes to dress well, he is a social media habitué, he loves to travel and appreciates the Ibiza dance scene. And he has the Down Syndrome. He never thinks about it, he never mentions it, he especially hates when people say: «He is Down», because the Down Syndrome is not something that you are, but something that you have. «Like a skin color, like a sexual preference», he says. In Italy, life expectancy for people who have Down Syndrome used to be 12 years old, there were ghetto school that used to prepare kids for a ghetto life. Now, life expectancy is 62 years old, half of the people with Down Syndrome in Italy are adults. People who get an education, work, try to live on their own, even who get married. People who struggle everyday against prejudice and abuse. Marco and his friends (Viola, Federica) are a new wave of dreamers with Down Syndrome. We spent days with them, we shoot themselves as the movie stars they feel and we collected their dreams. Plan A for Marco is to become a movie star. Plan B is to buy and cinema in his neighbourhood, give new life to it and employ his friends.

«Like a skin color, like a sexual preference», he says.

In Italy, life expectancy for people who have Down Syndrome used to be 12 years old, there were ghetto school that used to prepare kids for a ghetto life. Now, life expectancy is 62 years old, half of the people with Down Syndrome in Italy are adults. People who get an education, work, try to live on their own, even who get married. People who struggle everyday against prejudice and abuse. Marco and his friends (Viola, Federica) are a new wave of dreamers with Down Syndrome. We spent days with them, we shoot themselves as the movie stars they feel and we collected their dreams. Plan A for Marco is to become a movie star. Plan B is to buy and cinema in his neighbourhood, give new life to it and employ his friends.

Ferdinando Cotugno