Better a Fascist Than a Faggot draws from Norman Mine’s adolescence in Rome, where experiences of homophobia, regional prejudice and the pressure to perform masculinity became entangled with the attraction of a neo-fascist youth group.
Rather than approaching fascism simply as an external political ideology, the work examines its seduction from inside: the promise of brotherhood, protection and identity offered to someone who feels excluded elsewhere. Through Dino Desica, Mine revisits the uncomfortable possibility that belonging can sometimes require the rejection, concealment or transformation of parts of oneself.
Filmed around Santiago Calatrava’s unfinished Vela di Tor Vergata in Rome, the abandoned monumental structure becomes a psychological landscape for failed ideals, masculine power and unresolved memory.
Moving between autobiography, performance and constructed narrative, the work deliberately destabilises the boundary between testimony and fiction. Dino becomes both character and unreliable witness, allowing personal memory to be reconstructed, exaggerated and questioned rather than presented as documentary truth.
At its centre is a contradiction between desire and ideology, vulnerability and violence, exclusion and belonging, asking how identity can be shaped by the systems from which we seek recognition.
Writer, Director and Editor: Norman Mine
Performance: Dino Desica
Cinematography: Norman Mine
Soundtrack: Lottie Loupoulet
Colour: Viktor Back
Supported by: Arts Council England, DYCP
Selected Screenings
2026 – London Premiere, The Arzner Cinema, London
Screening followed by a Q&A with Matthew McLee
2025 – Athens International Film + Video Festival, Athens
2025 – Bar.lina, Rome
Private viewing link available on request.