Happy Family

Academy award-winning veteran director Gabriele Salvatores (Mediterraneo) delivers a colourful tongue-in-cheek comedy about a writer holed up in his apartment in Milan one hot summer trying to punch out a story while the characters come to life around him offering their input on the direction they think the story should take.

Recently dumped screenwriter Ezio (Fabio De Luigi) is having trouble writing a story about two neurotic families whose paths cross when their teenage children, Filippo and Marta, decide to marry. The family members – Filippo’s parents (played by Fabrizio Bentivoglio and Margherita Buy) and Marta’s parents ( Diego Abatantuono and Carla Sinoris) arrange to have dinner to meet for the first time, with hilarious consequences. Ezio soon writes himself into his script, and into a love story, while the characters bother him about having bigger and better roles!

Part of a series of events linked to Milan’s EXPO 2015 “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life” [May – October 2015]

	Director: Gabriele Salvatores Italy, 2010, 90 minutes Film in Italian with English subtitles TRAILER (via YouTube)

Born in Naples in 1950, Salvatores debuted as a theatre director in 1972, founding in Milan the Teatro dell’Elfo, for which he directed several avant-garde pieces until 1989.

In that year, he directed his first feature film, “Marrakech Express”, which was followed in 1990 by “Turne’ ” . Both films shared a group of actor-friends, including Diego Abatantuono and Fabrizio Bentivoglio, who will be present in many of his later movies. In 1991, Salvatores received great international praise for “Mediterraneo”, which won an Academy Award as best foreign film. It also won three David di Donatello , the most important award for Italian cinema, and a Silver Ribbon.

A good success was “Io non ho paura” of 2003, from the Niccolo’ Ammaniti novel. In 2005 he directed the noir “Quo Vadis,Baby? His 2008 film “As God Commands” was entered into the 31st Moscow international Film Festival.