Cinema Paradiso

Will Amira Willighagen, the angelic child prodigy, live on only in our memory?

Today, June 6, a fan of Amira Willighagen living in Italy, Leandro Pancrazi, was editing a tribute to Amira, using the final scene from the 1988 Italian film Cinema Paradiso, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. In the film a film director returns to his home town and visits a small cinema where he played and worked as a child. The old cinema engineer has passed away and left him a film. It is all the kisses from black and white films he had cut out and saved. In Leandro's film, the kisses are replaced with scenes of Amira growing up on the stage and bowing to her audiences. The director weeps.

The background music in the film is by the famous Italian composer Ennio Morricone. When Leandro had finished making his short tribute to Amira, he learned that Morricone had passed away during the night when he was making this film. His film thus wound up being a tribute to both Amira and Morricone.

Here are Leandro's own words about his tribute, translated from his original Italian.

Last night I started creating this video for our Princess, I couldn't imagine...
This morning I heard the terrible news that the great Italian musician Ennio Morricone left us during the night, around 02.00 pm Italian time, just as I was creating this video with his background music and I didn't know that in those minutes he was dying... I edited the final scene of the wonderful film "Nuovo Cinema Paradiso", winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1988 and directed by the great Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore. This video of mine, in addition to being a tribute to our Princess for the many kind reverence that melted my heart and made me love Amira even more, wants to be my humble personal tribute to the great, immense, genius of music, Ennio Morricone, who today flew among the stars forever.

Amira's father accompanying her on organ in her last public performance
on Dec. 16, 2019, singing How Great Thou Art

Now I see a deeply moving but sad meaning to this film. Due to current events, Amira may never in her life again perform before a live audience on a stage. She may always be remembered as a child performer. And thus this little tribute film takes on a whole different meaning.

If this is true that Amira has performed for the last time, and her beautiful voice and charm are destined to live on only in the memory of her fans, and captured on video, then it makes her final performance before a live audience all the more meaningful and significant. That performance was her December 16, 2019 performance of How Great Thou Art, accompanied solely by her father on organ. The scene of this last performance was all the more poignant to those who know Amira's whole story, for her career began with her performing in the park with her father.


Possibly Amira's last live performance, with her father in Dreumel, The Netherlands, on December 16, 2019


First ever public performance, Amira and her father, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, on April 30, 2011

It is very sad to say, but Amira's singing career may be over. And all the greater will her recorded performances be. And one day her story will be written. For she will be a legend.