Filibus

Filibus is a 1915 Italian silent adventure film directed by Mario Roncoroni and written by the future science fiction author Giovanni Bertinetti (it). It features Valeria Creti (fr) as the title character, a mysterious sky pirate who makes daring heists with her technologically advanced airship. When an esteemed detective sets out on her trail, she begins an elaborate game of cat and mouse with him, slipping between various male and female identities to romance the detective's sister and stage a midnight theft of a pair of valuable diamonds.

Filibus was produced by Corona Film, a short-lived Turin-based studio operating on relatively low budgets and obscure casts. Though Italian reviews at its release were negative, Filibus has been well received by later writers and film historians who have highlighted its pioneering use of lesbian attraction, genderfluidity, and science fiction motifs, and its creative adaptation of stylistic elements from contemporary popular fiction. It has been screened at numerous film festivals, and a nitrate print survives at the Eye Filmmuseum (Amsterdam) with a dupe print held in Milan.