Despite his latest film being censored, Luca Guadagnino remains cautiously optimistic about the power of filmmaking. After a screening of Queer was banned in Istanbul earlier this month, the Oscar-nominated director vowed to “fight any institution that wants to tarnish” cinema while speaking at the Marrakech International Film Festival,

Luca Guadagnino said on Saturday at the Marrakech Film Festival that he'll be 'happy' if people download "Queer" in Turkey where it's been banned.

I know the story of Queer well — the book itself, the circumstances of it being written, and the mythology that preceded the publication of it, the “lost” William Burroughs manuscript. And so I was truly dreading seeing Luca Guadagnino’s $53 million Queer,

The director detailed his ambitions around the William S. Burroughs novella while the actor known for playing James Bond praised the daring script.

But beyond the scandalous nature of the scene, working with Guadagnino was a personal milestone for Apollo. “Luca’s always been a huge inspiration,” the singer tells Them. “I’ve been watching his films for so long. I was in Indiana, like, ‘Oh, one day it’d be crazy if I did a film with him.’ So it was cool that that was my first one.”

And perhaps it was for this reason that Guadagnino included a direct reference to a titular scene from the film Queer, referencing the moment as Orphée enters the underworld for the first time, with his arms outstretched as he walks through the liquid-like mirror that acts as a gateway to hell.