Salvatores: "I told Fellini I was a director, he replied: courage. Now I'm making a film about him"

Salvatores: Fellini told me: "We are all buffoons"

The director tells the anecdote at the Bif&st: "I was 23, he told me to have courage and now I'm making a film about him"

BA - "Fellini told me: 'We are all buffoons'. In 1971, at the age of 23, I went to Cinecittà to show him my short film. I said: "I want to do your assistant". And he replied: "You are a director, have courage". And now here I am, finally making a film about him." The anecdote - which Salvatores repeated to Repubblica - was the preamble to a long and original speech on Fellini's poetics, delivered at the Bif&st by the Neapolitan director, who directed Il testimone, Mediterranean, and Nirvana, among others.

At the Bif&st, where he will receive the Fellini Award, Salvatores also revealed what his film about the great Rimini director will be like: it will be titled Il bambino Fellini (The Child Fellini) and will be shot in his birthplace between August and September: "It is a free and visionary story, based on a screenplay by myself, Doriana Leondeff and Marco Bellocchio, whom Fellini wanted to direct his last film, The Voyage of G. Mastorna."