Stefano Vicario

The attorney Andrea Massimi shares the law firm left to him by his father with his older brother Giorgio. The two are a study in contrasts: Andrea is a cheater, vain and unreliable, while Giorgio is on the straight and narrow, respectable, ethical to a fault. One night unspeakable tragedy strikes Andrea: his wife and child are killed in their home while he is out with his lover. Distraught and overwhelmed with guilt, Andrea rejects his world of privilege and takes refuge with a group of homeless people in an abandoned train car at Rome’s Termini station. In this coexistence with the have-nots, Andrea achieves a sort of peace, until he notices a bracelet he had given his wife on the wrist of a transexual, and resolves to shed light on the night he has tried so hard to forget. Andrea’s investigation, aided by his homeless friends and by Anna, a judge whom he comes to trust – while his brother is still ashamed of him – turns out to be a plot-twisting journey among corrupt cops and characters with an unexpected humanity, against the backdrop of a city we can barely bring ourselves to imagine.

Stefano Vicario (Rome, 1953) is a screenwriter and director. In 1973, he got his start as an assistant director for his father, Marco Vicario, and then for filmmakers like Damiano Damiani. Specialized in television productions, he has directed many programs and TV series, as well as various editions of the Sanremo Festival and shows starring Roberto Benigni. Vicario also wrote and directed a feature film, Sottovento!, in 2001. Il re degli stracci is his first novel, for which the television rights, in view of adapting it as a series, have been optioned by Carlo degli Esposti’s Palomar.

edited by Gabriele Acerbo e Roberto Pisoni

He is a hero to Quentin Tarantino, a horrormeister to Sam Raimi, and, as far as Guillermo del Toro is concerned, a designer of unsettling, lyrical images: Mario Bava, who was born in Sanremo on July 31, 1914, and died suddenly in Rome on April 25, 1980, was a major Italian director in the fantastic genre, a pioneer of special effects, and a visionary filmmaker who influenced an entire generation of directors. For years, the curators of Kill Baby Kill! Il cinema di Mario Bava, Gabriele Acerbo and Roberto Pisoni, collected dozens of interviews with the likes of Joe Dante, Nicolas Winding Refn, John Landis, Dario Argento, John Phillip Law, Daria Nicolodi, Christopher Lee, Carlo Rambaldi, Barbara Steele, Mario Monicelli, Roger Corman, Dino De Laurentiis, and, last but not least, the Manetti Bros. – the last of whom, over fifty years since Bava’s own adaptation, are bringing out their own adaptation of Diabolik in 2021. The book features essays by leading critics and reminiscences by Bava’s children, Elena and Lamberto, and his grandson Roy. With the comments by actors and directors, these family memories round out the portrait of a creative genius – director of cult films such as Black Sabbath, Planet of the Vampires, Black Sunday, and Blood and Black Lace – who reinvented an array of film genres: horror, mystery, sword-and-sandal, and science-fiction, and was able to do so despite laughably low budgets, thanks to amazing tricks and a heaping dose of irony.

Gabriele Acerbo (Piombino, 1966) is chief of programming at Sky Cinema and head of development for Sky Original films. A journalist, he has collaborated with Target and Report. He is the co-author of the book My name is Virzì. L’avventurosa storia di un regista di Livorno.
Roberto Pisoni (Pomezia, 1969) is the head of Sky’s entertainment channels. Since 1999, he has written, directed and produced award-winning promos, programs, documentaries and films about cinema, art, music and dance that have premiered at the leading national and international festivals.

Simona Vinci

Maura has given up practically everything for her musical career, but now she isn’t sure she’ll be able to sing as she did before: she’s a rather famous soprano who has just had a thyroid operation. On top of that, she has her doubts about her relationship with Fred, her agent. Nevertheless, she has agreed to take part in a cultural event that he and Marco are arranging in a villa outside Bologna. Maura is slated to sing the signature arias of Giuseppina Pasqua, the opera singer Verdi adored, and one-time owner of the house and its mysterious garden. Marco’s wife, Ursula, is helping her rehearse; born in Russia, she would have become a classical pianist if she hadn’t been abandoned as a child. Soon strange things start happening in the villa, for which there is no logical explanation, and the two women and their partners plunge into a spiral of suspicion and delusions.

Simona Vinci (Milan, 1970) made her literary debut with the novel Dei bambini non si sa niente (1997). In 1999, she published a short story collection, In tutti i sensi come l’amore, shortlisted for the Campiello Prize, which she nearly won, by a handful of votes, in 2003, for Come prima delle madri; she finally won the Campiello in 2016, for La prima verità. Since 2004, Vinci’s other novels include: Brother and Sister, Stanza 411 (2006), Strada Provinciale Tre (2007), Nel bianco (2008), Parla, mia paura (2017), In tutti i sensi come l’amore (2018), Rovina (2019), and Mai più sola nel bosco. Dentro le fiabe dei Fratelli Grimm (2019, which earned her the 2021 Rapallo Prize). Vinci has hosted television and radio programs; she contributes to newspapers and magazines and translates novels from English to Italian (such as The Missing Girl by Shirley Jackson and The Bricks That Built the Houses by Kate Tempest). In 2016, she tried her hand at a play, Porta della Rocca Ostile.