Akademik

(I960-)

   Director and screenwriter. After studying at the Gaumont Film School in Rome, where he directed Nei dintorni di mezzanotte (Around Midnight) as an episode of the group film Juke Box (1983), Luchetti worked in advertising before assisting Nanni Moretti on Bianca (The Sweet Body of Bianca, 1984) and La messa e finita (The Mass Is Ended, 1985). In 1987, with the financial backing of Moretti's newly formed Sacher Film company, he was able to make his directorial debut with Domani accadra (Tomorrow It Will Happen), a witty historical costume drama that earned him the David di Donatello for Best New Director. After the less convincing La settimana della sfinge (The Week of the Sphinx, 1990), he directed what many still regard as his best work to date, Ilportaborse (The Yes Man, 1991), a film that uncannily anticipated the revelations of systematic political corruption in Italy that were brought to light only a year later by the Mani pulite (Clean Hands) investigations. A further attempt to unveil political corruption and collusion in Arriva la bufera (The Storm Arrives, 1993) was followed by an affectionate, though not uncritical, portrait of the Italian educational system in La scuola (School, 1995), before another return to the past in I piccoli maestri (Little Teachers, 1998), the story of several young and idealistic intellectuals who join the Resistance movement in 1943. Luchetti's more recent Mio fratello e' un figlio unico (My brother Is an Only Child, 2007) dramatically reexamines the 1968 generation.

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira