Biografie

Frequently casts Toni Servillo

Frequently works with cinematographer Luca Bigazzi

Oblique storytelling with partially obscure plots

Often casts veteran actors in supporting roles: Angela Goodwin and Raffaele Pisu in Die Folgen der Liebe (2004), Fabrizio Bentivoglio in L'amico di famiglia (2006), Fabio Bucci, Giorgio Colangeli and Paolo Graziosi in Il Divo - Der Göttliche (2008), Carlo Verdone and Carlo Buccirosso in La Grande Bellezza - Die große Schönheit (2013).

Often tends to have a large 10+ minutes prologue before the main title appears.

Lost both his parents in a domestic accident at the age of 16.

Music is written into his scripts.

During production of his films, he never goes back and sees what he filmed at the end of the day, so when he goes to the cutting room, he really sees for the first time what his DP and him captured.

Never studied at a film school.

Cannot write his scripts without listening to music.

I don't use Twitter. I'm a serious person.

[on the journeys in La Grande Bellezza - Die große Schönheit (2013)] In the film apparently there is no destination. People are floating over life. Apparently, they are always still in the same place. They're destined to go nowhere. However, the protagonist, without even realizing it, is moving toward a very precise destination. It is an appointment with the highest moment of his youth, his adolescence and of his purity. So the destination is specifically indeed those cliffs where he ends up meeting the young girl. The love of his life when he was a young man.

[on the constant motion in daily life] It's the fragmentary nature of the movement in today's life that makes it difficult to move in tune with the past. It's the neurotic component of the fragmentary nature of today's movement that makes it difficult to get in touch with the feelings that characterized the past, or other experiences.

[on La Grande Bellezza - Die große Schönheit (2013)] It's very much a film about the time flowing and with the flowing of time, the time that we end up wasting in our lives. That's why it becomes burdensome and we are all dealing with the aspect of death. But through this fatigue, this weight of our life on all of us, we somehow give dignity to the life that we are living.

[on Rome] There's one thing that I like about Rome that was stated by Napoleon: that from sublime to pathetic is only one step away. And in Rome there's a constant shifting between sublime and pathetic.