Akademik

(1958-)

   Director, novelist, screenwriter. Daughter of veteran director Luigi Comencini, Cristina began doing small parts in her father's films as a child and was soon cowriting the screenplays of some of his films, including Cuore (Heart, 1984) and La storia (History, 1986). In 1988 she made her own directorial debut with the quirky children's film Zoo (1988). This was followed by I divertimenti della vita privata (The Amusements of Private Life, 1990), an elegant costume drama with feminist undertones set in revolutionary France; La fine e nota (The End Is Known, 1993), a thriller based on a novel by Geoffrey Holiday Hall; and a very successful adaptation of Susanna Tamaro's best-selling novel Va'dove tiporta il cuore (Follow Your Heart, 1996). At the same time she pursued her literary interests and published a string of successful novels, among them Pagine strappate (The Missing Pages, 1991), Passione di famiglia (Family Passion, 1994), and Il cappotto del turco (The Turk's Overcoat, 1997). She returned to directing with the bittersweet comedy Matrimoni (Marriages, 1998), which was followed by what many regard as her finest film, Il piu bel giorno della mia vita (The Best Day of My Life, 2001), an intense family drama filtered through the eyes of a child. Her more recent La bestia nel cuore (The Beast in the Heart/Don't Tell, 2005), another family drama that Comencini adapted from her own novel of the same name, was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Festival in 2005 and put forward as the Italian nominee for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars in 2006.

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira