Marcella Di Folco


Marcella Di Folco was an Italian LGBT rights activist, actor, and politician. In her film appearances, played in male characters before transition, she is credited as Marcello Di Falco.

Career

In 1988, she became president of the MIT - Movimento Identità Transessuale and in 1997 vice-president of the Osservatorio Nazionale sull'Identità di Genere.
She was elected municipal councilor of Bologna in 1995, with the Green party. She was the first open trans woman to hold a political public office in the world. In 2014, at the 32nd Torino Film Festival, the film Una nobile rivoluzione by Simone Cangelosi, which tells her story had its premiere. In October 2019 Italian Journalist Bianca Berlinguer edited Storia di Marcella che fu Marcello a confession of Marcella Di Folco's life she recorded before Marcella died.
In 2024 her documentary biography has been included in Disobedience Archive, a Marco Scotini project dealing with LGBT issues, invited by Curator Adriano Pedrosa at Foreigners Everywhere art exhibition at 60th Venice Biennale.

Personal life

Di Folco had gender affirming surgery in 1987.

Filmography