I was born in Milan. My dad was a magistrate with a passion for cinema, my mother had studied literature, and they both gave me constant encouragement.

When I was still only a little girl, my parents heard me remark that Leonardo’s Mona Lisa was “really a great shot”.  After that, they began to take me seriously! So I studied at the DAMS (drama, art and music studies) school in Bologna and at the same time got myself selected for the Albedo Cinematografica in Milan, one of the very few film schools then in existence, financed by the European Community. There I met my masters, Giuseppe Bertolucci and Gianni Amelio.

My career began in Milan, making advertising and industrial films, but then I moved to Rome where I gradually worked my way up to directing films. I wrote and directed documentaries (Memories and When the State Kills), then moved on to docu-drama, at the time a total novelty (Casa nostra and Felice), produced by the Rai in Cagliari and enthusiastically supported by Rai 3 – especially by Bruno Voglino.

The settings were most unusual too: an old people’s home in Cagliari and a block of working-class apartments in Rome.

Thanks to the sheer weirdness of my work, the Rai – in the person of Gabriella Carosio – decided I was ripe for my film début, with a comedy: No Spring Chicken, duly followed up by Antonio, let’s smile and Due uomini, quattro donne e una mucca depressa, shot in Spain.

I also worked on a popular series: Un medico in famiglia – Doctor in the Family – for Rai 1, choosing the cast and directing the first four instalments. This serial was followed by Le ragioni del cuore (The Heart has its Reasons) and by the TV Movie La sfida (The Challenge) this time for Mediaset.

I made Il mondo di Mad (Mad’s World) a documentary containing plenty of animated sequences about the fashion illustrator Maddalena Sisto. This was shown at cinemas in Rome (Nuovo Cinema Aquila) and Milan (Spazio Oberdan) and on several European TV networks (AVRO, SVS, YLE, TSR, SKY ARTE). It was selected by Donna di Repubblica to celebrate Women’s Day on 8 March 2014.

I made “L’anello forte” by Auto Revelli’s novel (Theatre) and the last movie “Evelyne tra le nuvole” selected by Sguardi altrove International Women’s Film Festival.