SCRIPTWRITING
This page showcases a selection of my pieces for film and theatre, some of them produced by my own independent filmmaking company Storm and Light Pictures.
If your creative project needs to be translated from an idea into written words (as a synopsis, treatment, pitch deck or a whole screenplay)
and we can discuss how we can work together.
Io, la Saponificatrice (The soapmaker)
(Writer)
Status: Script development
At the end of the 1960s in Italy, an ambitious female criminal anthropologist interviews the infamous Soapmaker of Correggio who is spending her final days in a criminal prison. The two women challenge each other in a series of interviews where the analysis of the murders is interwoven with emotional manipulation and by the end, neither of them will be the same person.
The Other Truth
(Writer)
Status: Development
“We are the bearers of the original truth..."
A dystopian drama about two women bonding and sharing their lives behind the walls of a psychiatric institution.
I extensively researched the lives of women interned in psychiatric institutions: once inside, they lose their dignity, their freedom, their names, but not the ability to admire the snow dance outside their window. They fuse into one another, a quiet army of indistinct shapes. The world out there becomes distant, yearned for as much as dreaded. They are creatures of Dante’s ‘Purgatory’: the light of purifying snow washes their bodies but their nature as humans is somehow sinful. They still don’t deserve to be free. Yesterday as well as today, is a woman safer within the normal world or outside of it? Is a woman born free or does she have to conquer her freedom over and over and over?
Parrot Man
(Writer)
Status: Script development
“What is the difference between you and a sniper?”
A dark comedy about the necessary behavioural changes that creatures adopt for survival.
Parrots are highly intelligent creatures who can spend their whole life with the same partner and if they find themselves alone, often depart in such distress and self harm that they end up killing themselves. Humans can be the same. ‘Parrot Man’ is the story of highly intelligent yet often obnoxious Philip who, after losing his wife, finds himself largely incapacitated to carry on with a new life in a world that has very little sympathy for his struggle. Through a journey that resembles a game of snakes and ladders, Philip eventually finds himself at a crossroad: what choices does he have when he finally comes to face the truth of what happened to his wife and to their marriage?
Hey Elektra! A history of cutting
(English adaptation)
Status: Completed
elektra english adaptation
"You kept screaming night and day and my theatre was slipping further and further away from me, into an abyss"
A handy leaflet of daily psychopathology. The family as the archetype of primordial violence, where bonds are formed and sliced apart with a single, deliberate cut.
A play and production by Arsenale delle Arti.
The Melted Heart
(Writer)
Status: Development
"This war is giving you the chance to show who you really are..."
A period drama about a love story born despite of and thanks to conflict.
The Churchill Barriers and the Italian Chapel are both works of passion and pain, built to fight a war and to bring two populations, the Italians and the Orcadians, together. Cora and Guido represent these two worlds, and both carry the wounds of the war inside them. They want freedom from their present living situation, embarking separately and together in a fight for self-determination, for their right to choose their own life path. ‘The Melted Heart’ is a story of freedom, strength and devotion to oneself and to loved ones, narrated by an old traveller, the symbol of the rich Orcadian storytelling tradition. With a raw and lyrical tone, it recalls Shakespearian dreamlike echoes, but it lingers on the gruesome and realistic details of death too. It combines the claustrophobic scenarios of despair with the boundless flights of hope.
Read the article: https://www.orkneyology.com/italian-chapel-the-melted-heart.html
Poor Unfortunate Souls
(Writer, producer, actor)
Status: Completed
"Daddy is missing us!"
Angela is driving to the beach. Her husband calls her, begging her not to go to there; not today. She doesn’t listen. She has a mission to accomplish and so she cuts the conversation off.
Told with a surreal tone, ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’ is the story of a conflicting couple that turns into a farce, thanks to the use of a quiz show as a distorted metaphor of their relationship. Against a stunningly realistic background, their artificial conversations never reach a point of contact, never find a common ground. And if a duel it is, there must be a loser at some point.
A production by Storm and Light Pictures.
The Starmaker
(Writer, producer, actor)
Status: Distribution
"If we all are made of stars, what are stars made of?"
A video poetry about the meaning of death and the origins of birth.
A production by Storm and Light Pictures.
The Crow's Legacy
(Writer, producer, actor)
Status: Financing
"You speak for the devil that haunts me"
In XV century Tuscany, the noble Pucci family lives in a fortified castle which is the target of many outlaws. During a particularly savage attack the entire family is virtually wiped out. Only a single child survives, saved by an African servant.
Three centuries later, the people in and around the same castle are hit by a mysterious plague that contaminates, weakens and kills mercilessly everyone and everything in its way. What is the link between that African servant and the new disease? And is there a way out of it? When the world of science and modernity storms into the castle thanks to three brilliant female researchers, a wind of hope shakes the stillness and the tedium of the castle secluded community. ‘The Crow’s legacy’ is about superstition against science, past against future, revenge against forgiveness. The life of every character depends on what they decide to believe in.
A production by Storm and Light Pictures.
Chanel and the smelly world of Market Street
(Writer, performer)
Status: Completed (Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2009/Leicester Square Theatre, London, 2009)
"Be honest with me: do I smell bad???"
What do a rat of class named Chanel, a frail old bag lady, a homicidal tart named Lola and a fallen supermodel have in common, while sniffing the bitter-sweet aromas of life in busy Market Street?