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Francesca Comencini
She was born in Rome in
1961. Her father was the famous director Luigi Comencini,
and her mother, Giulia, was the daughter of princess
Eleonora Grifeo di Partanna. She was attending Philosophy
Courses at the University when she decided to quit her
studies and move to France. There she married the actor and
producer Daniel Toscan du Plantier but they divorced shortly
after the birth of their first child. Her first feature film
was Pianoforte
(1984) an autobiographical story of a student young lady and
a well known journalist for which she was awarded the De
Sica Award for Best First Work at the Venice Film Festival.
The following years were mostly dedicated to screenplay
writing and together with her father, she wrote
The Boy from Calabria
(1987) and in 1989 she wrote and directed the French film
La lumière du lac,
released in 1989. In 1991, she worked as assistant director
to her father for Marcellino,
a remake of the classic Miracle
of Marcelino and made the film
Annabelle partagée,
released only in France. The documentary,
Elsa Morante,
dedicated to the great writer followed
in 1995, as part of a series about famous writers and in the
same period, Shakespaere in
Palermo, based on a play by
Carlo Cecchi. Her return to feature filmmaking came in 2001,
with My Father’s Word,
a loose adaptation of the psychological
novel La coscienza di Zeno
by Italo Svevo in which she directed
Chiara Mastroianni, the daughter of Marcello Mastrianni and
the actor/director Mimmo Calopresti. In the summer of 2001,
she filmed a reportage of the incidents during the G8 Summit
in Genoa: Carlo Giuliani, Boy
dedicated to the young man who died in
clashed whit the police, was presented at the Cannes Film
Festival. In 2003, she returned to features, directing
I Love to Work (Mobbing),
starring Nicoletta Braschi. The film was assigned the Jury
Award at Berlin Film Festival and the Nastro d’argento. The
following year (2004), she took part in the “Visions of
Europe project” with the short film
Anna Lives in Margherita
and finally in 2006 she directed
Our Country
in which she attack the power of money
and hypocritical moralism.
Francesca Comencini is one of the most
thrilling examples in today’s Italian cinema and she is an
inspiration for those women who aspire to become filmmakers.
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