Oscar-winning Italian composer Nino Rota, who scored “La Dolce Vita,” “The Leopard” and “The Godfather” – among many other masterpiece movies – is set for “Nino” a high-profile documentary being directed by prominent editor, screenwriter and director Walter Fasano.
Fasano is known for his longtime creative collaboration with Luca Guadagnino mainly as an editor on films such as “I Am Love,” on which he served both as editor and co-writer; “A Bigger Splash”; “Call Me by Your Name”; and the doc “Bertolucci on Bertolucci” that Guadagnino and Fasano co-directed. Fasano more recently directed the doc “Pino” about Italian artist, sculptor, and set designer Pino Pascali.
Rota wrote the score for 16 films directed by Federico Fellini, including “La Strada,” “8 1/2,” “Juliet of the Spirits” and “Amarcord,” besides “La Dolce Vita.” He also composed music for Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet” and the Sicilian-inspired theme for “The Godfather,” whose “Part II” score won him his only Oscar. Rota’s 150 films also included collaborations with King Vidor (“War and Peace”) and Luchino Visconti (“The Leopard”). Rota died at 68 in 1979.
Shooting is underway in Italy’s Apulia region – where Rota lived part of his life in the port city of Bari – on Fasano’s film that will interweave archive materials and interviews with big names who worked with the maestro or were deeply influenced by him, including director Park Chan-Wook, Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat, and seven-time Grammy Award winning conductor and arranger Vince Mendoza.
“Nino Rota’s music is so extraordinary that making a film about it is a simple gesture,” Fasano said in his directors’ statement. “You just have to make room for the music: this wonderful creative and expressive mystery is then embodied in the art and biographical story of a man who from a young age shows that he knows its deepest secrets,” he added.
“Nino” is being produced by Italy’s Be Water Film, Sugar Play, Adler Entertainment, and I Diavoli in collaboration with RAI Documentari and with support from the Apulia Film Fund. The doc is produced by Mattia Guerra for Be Water Film, by Filippo Sugar and Elisabetta Biganzoli for Sugar Play, by Marco Colombo for Adler Entertainment and by Marco Morabito (“Call Me by Your Name”). Adler is the executive producer on “Nino” which Be Water Film will distribute in Italy. No international sales company is yet on board.
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