Francesca Comencini

A philosophy student, she quit University after two years, and moved to France in 1982. Although she was planning to be a writer, she brought to the screen instead an autobiographical story with _Pianoforte (1984)_ (qv): the film won the De Sica Award at the Venice Film Festival and was invited to other International Festivals. In the five years it took her to prepare _La lumière du lac (1988)_ (qv) she co-wrote with 'Luigi Comencini' (qv) _A Boy from Calabria (1987)_ (qv) -- later on, she also co-directed _Marcellino (1991)_ (qv). After _Annabelle partagée (1991)_ (qv), never released in Italy, she directed the tv documentary _Un siècle d'écrivains: Elsa Morante (1996)_ (qv) (part of a series dedicated to famous writers) and "Shakespeare a Palermo" (1997), a documentary about the staging of a 'Carlo Cecchi' (qv) play. She was back to feature films in 2001 with _The Words of My Father (2001)_ (qv). Along with many Italian directors she contributed in July 2001 to a movie reportage on the Genoa riots.::alberto.farina@iol.it