Pistoia, 1920s. A child grows up in the Tuscan hills, the son of a cattle dealer. Nothing suggests that he will become one of the most refined directors of Italian cinema. Mauro Bolognini tells Donatella Baglivo about the melancholic moments of his childhood, his friendship with Silvano Fede –who fell in the Resistance fighting against the fascists–, and his move to Rome after the war.

He wanted to be an architect, he graduated in Florence. But the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia captured him: there he met Franco Zeffirelli and the costume designer Sensani, there he understood that his destiny was cinema. Without pay, “to learn the trade”, he became assistant director to Luigi Zampa. Then France, the apprenticeship, the return to Italy.

In 1953 he made his debut with “Ci troviamo in galleria”, with Alberto Sordi and a very young Sophia Loren. But it is the meeting with Pier Paolo Pasolini that changes everything. “La notte brava” (1959), “Il bell’Antonio” (1960), “La giornata balorda” (1960): co-written screenplays that reveal a director who was “never vulgar, perhaps a little violent” – as Pasolini himself defined him. In 1959 “Arrangiatevi!”, a irreverent fresco of the enclosed houses with Totò, Peppino De Filippo and Franca Valeri.

Bolognini attends the cenacle of Moravia, Elsa Morante, Pasolini. He becomes a master at reconstructing environments, with a obsessive attention to detail that makes him compare to Visconti. In 1970, “Metello,” based on Pratolini’s novel, launched Massimo Ranieri into the world of acting.

When asked “what is love?”, Bolognini replies that love is only pain, that eternal love does not exist. The documentary ends with the director reflecting on the passing of time, on the regret of not having finished his architectural studies, on the fear of growing old. An intimate portrait of a man who became a director “by chance” – and by chance created masterpieces.