365 Days Trivia | 30 facts about the controversial movie

«365 Days» is a 2020 Polish erotic thriller film directed by Barbara Białowąs and Tomasz Mandes.

Let’s find out more about the movie!

1. 365 Days is a 2020 Polish erotic thriller film.
2. It was directed by Barbara Białowąs and Tomasz Mandes.
3. It is based on the first novel of a trilogy by Blanka Lipińska.
4. The plot follows a young woman (Anna-Maria Sieklucka) from Warsaw in a spiritless relationship falling for a dominant Sicilian man (Michele Morrone), who imprisons and imposes on her a period of 365 days for which to fall in love with him.
5. 365 Days was released theatrically in Poland on 7 February 2020.
6. When it was made available on Netflix on 7 June 2020, it quickly gained global attention.
7. It became the most-watched item in territories across the world, including in the United States.
8. Despite this popularity, the film has received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics.
9. They criticized it for its perceived glorification of the Mafia and heavy use of sex sequences that included sexual violence, drawing comparisons to the Fifty Shades trilogy.
10. A sequel, 365 Days: This Day, is set to be released on Netflix on 27 April 2022.
11. Writer Blanka Lipinska revealed that the shot where lead actor Michele Morrone spits into the private parts of the actress playing Laura during the sexual intercourse was cut from prior versions of the film and was only re-instated after she asked for it to be put back in. She said it was “a very popular gesture in Poland” for couples.
12. Comparing this film favorably to 50 Shades of Grey (2015), lead star Michele Morrone pointed out that this film was more sexually explicit than 50 Shades which he said was “too clean” and not “rough or passionate” enough.
13. He stated that, unlike compromises made to bring 50 Shades to the screen, the audience will be able to see that this movie is exactly what they read and imagined in the novel 365 days. Several film critics comparing the two films have acknowledged the increased level of explicitness in this film compared to 50 Shades
14. The filmmakers went to great lengths to make the sex scenes authentic. The filmmakers wanted the audience to hear the whispers and heavy breaths of the actors and see their sweat and passion. They made the camera non-intrusive and invisible for the two actors so that they could act out the scene at length in several long takes.
15. The on-set crew was reduced to a minimum. The scenes turned out to be so convincing that several viewers mistakenly thought the lead actors really had sex on set and the actors had to personally shoot down the speculation.
16. Asked what was the most difficult scene to shoot in the movie, Michele Morrone said, “It was the blow-job scene. It was really difficult for me because I got on set and I met this girl – Hi, nice to meet you. And after 2 minutes that I met her, she starts blowing me. I had a fake strap-on penis, and she was blowing that. It was awkward but it was funny because she was blowing the fake d***. I couldn’t just act the part because as soon as she was starting, I could hear people around me giggling. And I was like – What the f***, just be serious.
17. Before he got the script for this movie, Michele Morrone had given up on his film and television career. He was newly divorced, broke, severely depressed, and working as a gardener in a tiny northern Italian village.
18. After five months of toiling alongside cows and chickens, he got a call from his agent saying a team of Polish filmmakers wanted to offer him the lead role of an Italian mafia boss. Morrone said he called his gardening boss said, “I’m not coming in today. My stomach doesn’t feel good,” and boarded a plane to Poland.
19. Michele Morrone said that along with his physical transformation, he needed a mental transformation too to create the character of Massimo.
20. He said, “He’s a sex addict. So we tried to base the character on someone who has a sex addiction. So even the expression of Massimo is that of a sex addict and when he gets excited the expression in his eyes should have a fire like a devil. It is difficult because I am not a sex addict. I had to build a character on this sickness – someone who is always thinking about sex. So psychologically, it wasn’t simple.”
21. Michele Morrone said that he had no problems with the highly explicit sex scenes because he is used to them in Italy. He said, “In the movie industry in Poland, it is something that you don’t accept. In Italy, we are really, really for this kind of scene because when we shoot sex scenes, we like to show the deepest passion ever. For us, in Italy, the sex scenes are really strong and deep. So I was really ready for it.”
22. Lead actor Michele Morrone denied claims that he had real sex with leading lady Anna Maria Sieklucka for the film’s highly explicit sex scenes. He said, “It seems real because we are good actors. We know how to fake it. No, it wasn’t real. Many people write to me that – OMG it was real, you guys looked so real but no, it wasn’t real.”
23. For the film’s controversial airplane fellatio scene where a flight attendant performs fellatio on Michele Morrone’s lead character, author Blanka Lipinska said that she offered to perform the scene herself as the flight attendant because the scene had generated a lot of controversies. She said that only she could show what the scene was truly about. The production company nixed this idea and an actress was hired to perform the scene.
24. Since Netflix originated their Daily Top 10 in February 2020, this movie has routinely featured in the Top 10 list for several territories including the US, Australia, Britain, Brazil, France, Spain, and India.
25. Forbes estimated that the film could be the biggest Netflix hit of the year beating several traditional American movies.
26. The anti-rape organization Pro Empower wrote an open letter, hoping the movie will be removed from the streaming websites, including Netflix
27. Upon its release, Polish critics criticized its execution and anti-feminist messages. Many opined that it was misogynistic. The foreign critical reception was equally negative.
28. When Blanka Lipinska was asked what her favorite part of the screen adaptation of her novel was, she said, “The sex is great!”
29. The filmmakers have noted that the movie is like an adult modern re-imagining of the classic Beauty and the Beast fairy-tale
30. Blanka Lipinska is the second writer in Razzie history to win the Worst Screenplay award for adapting their own work, after Heywood Gould for Cocktail (1988).