Akademik

(1951-)

   Director, producer, screenwriter. Son of veteran director Dino Risi, Marco began his apprenticeship in the cinema as an assistant to his uncle, Nelo Risi, on Una stagione all'inferno (A Season in Hell, 1970). After further experience as second unit director on Duccio Tessari's Zorro (1975) and La madama (Cops, 1976), Risi directed Appunti su Hollywood (Notes on Hollywood, 1978), a four-episode television documentary on American cinema. He subsequently cowrote the screenplays for Caro papa (Dear Papa, 1979) and Sono fotogenico (I'm Photogenic, 1980), both directed by his father, before making his own feature directorial debut with Vado a vivere da solo (I'm Going to Live by Myself, 1981). After making several other only moderately successful light comedies, he embarked on a series of more socially committed films, beginning with Soldati, 365 giorni all'alba (Soldiers, 1987). Mery per sempre (Forever Mary, 1989), set in a Sicilian reform school for young criminals, won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, and its sequel, Ragazzi fuori (Boys on the Outside, 1990), earned Risi the David di Donatello for best direction in 1991. In the same year his Muro di gomma (The Invisible Wall, 1991), an investigative feature on the Ustica air disaster of 1980, was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Festival.

   In 1992, together with Maurizio Tedesco, he founded the production company Sorpasso Film, with which he financed not only his own films but also the debut films of a number of emerging younger directors, including Ferzan Ozpetek's Hamam, il bagno turco (Steam: The Turkish Baths, 1997), for which he shared the Nastro d'argento as best producer. Among his subsequent films were II branco (The Pack, 1994), a disturbing film about gang rape; L'ultimo capodanno (Humanity's Last New Year's Eve, 1998), a grotesque social farce mixing elements of the commedia all'italiana with American pulp fiction; and Tre mogli (Three Wives, 2001), a female road movie through South America. Most recently he has directed Maradona, la mano di Dio (Maradona, The Hand of God, 2006), a celebratory but not uncritical biopic of the legendary soccer player.

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira