Watch UK Trailer For The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

Luchino Visconti is considered one of great filmmakers in cinematic history. Death In Venice is seen by many as one of his finest films, The Most Beautiful Boy in the World explores the former teen star who embodied the legendary character Tadzio and whom director Luchino Visconti dubbed “the most beautiful boy in the world”.

Fifty years after the premiere of iconic film, Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri’s celebrated documentary explores the life of Björn Andrésen, that once ‘Beautiful Boy’ thrusted into stardom thanks to the film. In a way it’s a cautionary of someone young being propelled into that stardom and adult Andrésen attempting to hide from that homoerotic fantasy they wanted him to be.

In 1970, filmmaker Luchino Visconti travelled throughout Europe looking for the perfect boy to personify absolute beauty in his adaptation for the screen of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. In Stockholm, he discovered Björn Andrésen, a shy 15-year-old teenager whom he brought to international fame overnight and led to spend a short but intense part of his turbulent youth between the Lido in Venice, London, the Cannes Film Festival and the so distant Japan. Fifty years after the premiere of Death in Venice, Björn takes us on a remarkable journey made of personal memories, cinema history, stardust and tragedy.