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In 1967, Italian engineer Giorgio Rosa (above right) designed and paid for the construction of a 400 square-metre platform suspended 26m above the water by steel pylons, off the coast of Rimini in Italy.

It was located just beyond the reach of local authorities, in non-territorial waters.

He called it Rose Island, declared it an independent state, and made himself president.

That’s one way to rise in the ranks.

Once completed, the platform, or island as Rosa called it, quickly attracted the attention of the media. At the time, the world was in turmoil amidst the Vietnam War and civil rights protests, and young people were looking for somewhere to get away from it all.

They started flocking to the island, and Rosa gained citizens for his state.

You can’t be a president without people to preside over.

Fast forward to 2020, and Netflix is making a movie about it.

The BBC spoke to the late Rosa’s son, Lorenzo.

“My father was an engineer, and in Italy it would be enough to describe him like this to understand what kind of person he was,” Lorenzo Rosa explains.

Image: Stamps created by Giorgio Rosa for Rose Island, Lorenzo Rosa

“He was a very precise, detailed person, and very organised. An engineer in an almost German sense of the word. Except for this small vein of craziness that led him to want to build a platform for himself, and then make it a state outside of territorial waters, which kind of made him the prince of anarchists.”

Rose Island is, according to producer Matteo Rovere, “a story about freedom, about how resilient Giorgio Rosa was against the government”.

“He didn’t want to surrender against the law, because the law in the 60s was that if you were more than six miles from the coast, it’s nobody’s land, so you can do what you want – just like if you were on the Moon.”

Image: Giorgio and his wife Gabriella Rosa, Lorenzo Rosa

“And so he built the island, which was incredible because it was very complicated. He built it with four friends and a very small group of workers, in six months. He invented the technology to do it, and he was very proud of the technology.”

Image: Popsugar

“In fact, when we spoke to him [about making a film] he was not very interested in the story, but he was enthusiastic to tell us about the technology he had invented to build it.”

Rosa died in 2017 at the age of 92. Prior to this he had met with director Sydney Sibilia and his team, and gave them his blessing to adapt his story for the screen.

Sibilia says that testimony to the incredible feat of engineering that Rosa achieved was how difficult it was to recreate his island.

As for the original structure – just 55 days after the island’s declaration of independence on June 24, 1968, the Italians sent in military forces to assume control.

They destroyed Rose Island on February 11, 1969, using dynamite. A storm submerged it entirely a day later.

“They did and said all of that simply because they wanted to ruin its reputation,” says Rosa’s son. “They even suggested there were Russian submarines beneath the island. And then another accusation was that the island was dangerous because it was unstable, and yet it took three rounds of dynamite to destroy it.”

In the film, Italian actor Elio Germano stars as Rosa, while his love interest is portrayed by Matilda De Angelis.

Make sure the subtitles are on when you watch the trailer:

Rose Island will start streaming from December 9.

You can read more about Rosa’s fascinating life here.

[source:bbc]