Bisacquino, Sicily, 1897. Francesco Rosario Capra is born into a desperately poor peasant family. At six years old, in 1903, the family emigrates to the United States: thirteen days crossing in third class, packed like cattle in the hold of a steamship. It is the beginning of the American dream.

“My name is Frank Capra, perhaps you’ve already heard my name…”—jokes the great director at the beginning of the lengthy interview granted to Donatella Baglivo for this exceptional report on his life. A self-deprecating humor that conceals one of the most extraordinary careers in the history of cinema.

Young Frank grows up in Los Angeles, graduates in chemical engineering from the California Institute of Technology, but it is cinema that calls him. After grueling apprenticeships—street vendor, poker player, jack-of-all-trades in the studios—he arrives at directing. And changes Hollywood forever.

With Columbia Pictures, then considered a “Poverty Row” studio, Capra builds an empire of successes. “It Happened One Night” (1934) is the first film to win all five major Oscars. Masterpieces follow: “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” (1936), “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939), “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946)—today considered one of the greatest American films of all time.

Winner of six Oscars, three as Best Director, thirty years after his last film Frank Capra remains one of the most famous directors in cinema history. His style—optimism, faith in the common man, denunciation of corruption—defined a genre: “Capra-corn,” cinema of the heart that does not renounce civic commitment.

In this documentary we speak not only with him, but also with actors, directors, cinematographers, critics, friends: Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Shirley Jones, Jane Wyatt, director Delbert Mann, screenwriter Melville Shavelson, film historian Jeanine Basinger. A chorus of voices to tell the story of a man who embodied the American dream.

Frank Capra became for Donatella Baglivo a master and a guide during her American period. This documentary is also the testimony of an encounter between two cinematic cultures: the Italy that Capra had left as a child, the America he had conquered with his genius.

The director left us in 1991, but his films continue to move generations of viewers around the world.