Roberto Faenza

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Roberto Faenza (born February 21, 1943 in Turin, Italy) is a successful Italian director.

Born in Turin in 1943, Roberto Faenza gets a degree in Political Science and a diploma at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.
He makes his directing debut in 1968 with a great international success, Escalation, a film that describes the different sides of power through the relationship between a middle-class father and his hippie son. Immediately after that he realises H2S, an angry apology of the 1968 movement, seized two days after its release and never distributed anymore. Upon this sequestration he goes to the United States to teach at the Federal City College of Washington DC.
In 1978 he makes Forza Italia!, a ferocious satire on the power of the Italian Christian Democrat party covering thirty years of Italian political history. The film is withdrawn from the theatres on the day Aldo Moro, President of the Christian Democrats, is kidnapped, and remains banned for over 15 years. Aldo Moro being the one who will end his life recommending (in his handwritten memoirs found in the den of the Red Brigades in via Monte Nevoso in Milan) to see the film “if one wants to realize the recklessness of his fellow party members”.
In 1980 Faenza picks on the Italian Communist Party with Si salvi chi vuole. Considered as a politically incorrect director, he is forced to work outside of Italy to be able to find financing: in 1983 he shoots Copkiller in New York with Harvey Keitel, Nicole Garcia and the leader of the Sex Pistols, Johnny Rotten.
His activities are not limited to cinema: author of essays and books (best known among them: Senza chiedere permesso, Il malaffare, Gli americani in Italia), upon his return in Italy he starts teaching Mass Communication at Pisa University. After Copkiller he becomes inspired by literature as a source of stories.
In 1990 he makes The Bachelor, based on a short story by Arthur Schnitzler with a prestigious cast: Keith Carradine, Miranda Richardson, Kristin Scott Thomas and Max Von Sidow. In 1993 he directs Jonah who Lived in the Whale for which he is awarded with the David di Donatello for Best Director. Two years later yet another novel (this time by Antonio Tabucchi) is his source of inspiration: According to Pereira, Marcello Mastroianni’s last Italian film, the latter awarded with a David di Donatello as Best Leading Actor. In 1997 he makes Marianna Ucria based on the novel La lunga vita di Marianna Ucria by Dacia Maraini. In 1999 he directs The Lost Lover, ispired on the bestseller by Abraham B. Yehoshua about the ongoing crash between Jews and Palestinians. In 2003 he obtains another international success, The Soul Keeper, based on the burning passion between Carl Gustav Jung and his young Russian patient Sabina Spielrein.
His most recent films are: Come into the Light, about the life of Don Puglisi, the parish priest killed in Palermo by the mafia in 1993, played by Luca Zingaretti (Nomination European Academy Award (EFA) as Best Director 2005; David Giovani Best Film Award; Flaiano Best Leading Actor Award and Audience Award for the Best Film; Best Leading Actor Award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2005; San Fedele Best Film Award); The Days of Abandonment, inspired on the novel by Elena Ferrante, with Margherita Buy, Luca Zingaretti and the musician Goran Bregovic.