He won the Academy Award for best foreign film in 1992 for his film Mediterraneo; Gabriele Salvatores made a big impression more recently with The Invisible Boy.
Happy birthday to a truly innovative and creative director Gabriele Salvatores, born in Naples in 1950. Known primarily for his Oscar win, he’s hasn’t been resting on his laurels.
Il Ragazzo Invisibile (The Invisible Boy) won the European Film Award 2015 for Young Audiences and is about a boy whose Halloween costume makes him invisible.
Voted on by young movie goers across Europe, juries of kids aged 12-14 years old in 25 European cities voted on the prize. The Invisible Boy is about a shy 13-year-old boy played by Ludovico Girardello with Valeria Golino, Fabrizio Bentivoglio and Christo Jivkov. It’s especially notable because it is Italy’s first “comic book movie”, has a superhero, and explores a world of fantasy.
Americans embraced Salvatores’ touching Io Non Ho Paura (I’m Not Scared), about the kidnapping of a 10 year old boy named Filippo, a classic story of right and wrong.
Ten year old Michele finds Fillipo in chains in a hole in the ground covered with a sheet of metal and you might think that his first instinct would be to tell the adults – to get help. But Michele knows that the adults, even his own parents, are not to be trusted. As he begins to understand more about what’s going on he’s compelled to help Filippo.
Io Non Ho Paura is based on the story of real boy from Milan who was kidnapped during the period in Italy in which terrorist groups kidnapped wealthy people from the North and held them in the South, and killed them if a ransom wasn’t paid.
Salvatores delighted Italians with his 2014 documentary Italy In A Day, a project that invited the whole country to participate. Salvatores pieced together micro-moments in the lives of over 600 ordinary citizens all filmed on Oct. 26, 2013, taken from 632 videos from more than 2,200 hours of images submitted by over 40,000 people.
I Love Italian Everything 