My Italian friend Leandro made this wonderful video tribute to his adoration of Amira Willighagen. Leandro is a huge fan of Amira. His story is that about five years ago his wife ran off to Germany with another man, leaving Leandro in Italy to raise their three small children on his own. He found himself facing heartache on top of the huge responsibility of raising three kids. Leandro works in the construction business outside Rome. When Covid struck in 2020 he found himself struggling financially on top of everything else. Leandro barely made it through this terrible time. Only one thing saved him. A little over a year ago Leandro discovered Amira Willighagen online and began to watch all her videos. Tears filled his eyes and he found himself mysteriously uplifted and inwardly sustained. Looking back he found that he had a huge debt to Amira. She had literally rescued him with her love and voice.
In this touching and powerfully sentimental video, taken from the final scene in the 1988 Academy Award winning Italian film Cinema Paradiso, a man who looks an awful lot like Leandro himself watches Amira alone in a movie theatre, as she curtseys at the end of all her concerts. The music is the theme song of Cinema Paradiso, written by the late Ennio Morricone. Below is a picture of Leandro and his three beautiful kids as they appear today. |
| Leandro and his 3 kids. Giulio 22, Valeria 17 and Massimo 10. |
Update May 24, 2020
There is a little more I should add to this story. Leandro had thought of making a tribute to Amira for a long time. As he made this video he chose the final scene from the movie "Cinema Paradiso" with the musical score by the great Italian composer Ennio Morricone. It seemed fitting first for the beauty of the scene, but also because Amira had sung two famous songs by Ennio, Nella Fantasia from "The Mission" and Your Love from "Once Upon a Time in America." When Leandro finished editing the video he cried. Then he went to bed. When he woke he learned that Ennio Morricone had passed away in his sleep in Italy at the very time Leandro had been editing his tribute to Amira. He was 91.
Just as startling, in far away South Africa, Amira, also hearing of Morricone's death, immediately produced her own tribute, only hers was to Morricone himself. In it she chose to sing the very song Leandro had used in his tributed to her, Se. Her video, which she produced and edited herself in a single day, was shot in the same scratchy black and white period style as Leandro's. Small miracles happen. Here is Amira's tribute to Morricone.
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