Italian director Susanna Nicchiarelli’s Nico 1988, a biopic about Velvet Underground lead singer Christa Paffgen, better known as Nico, is set to open the Venice Film Festival’s Horizon section. The film will have its world premiere on the fest’s opening day on August 30 in Sala Darsena.

The film stars Danish multihyphenate Trine Dyrholm, who started out as a singer and who won the 2016 Berlin Golden Bear for her work in Thomas Vinterberg’s The Commune. She’ll star as Paffgen.

Set in Paris, Prague, Nuremberg, Manchester, the Polish countryside and the Roman seaside, Nico 1988 is a road-movie dedicated to the last years of Nico. One of Andy Warhol’s muses, the singer of the Velvet Underground and a woman of legendary beauty, Nico lived a second life after the story known to all when she began her career as a solo artist. Her music is noted as some of the most original to come out of the 1970s and 1980s.

“This is the story of Nico after Nico,” said Nicchiarelli, who directed Cosmonauta, which debuted in Venice in 2009. “People usually talk about her only in relation to men when she was young: Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, Alain Delon, Iggy Pop. I once read an interview that “at the age 34 Nico was finished.” That’s not true…I wanted to tell the story of her journey from a different point of view.

Marta Donzelli and Gregorio Paonessa produce the title and Celluloid Dreams is handling international sales.

Alexander Payne’s Downsizing is opening the festival competition section on August 30 and the full lineup is expected to be announced next week.

The 74th edition of the Venice Film Festival takes place August 30 – September 9, 2018.