How Strange to be Named Federico

“I wanted to speak with Federico. To gather his remembrances, to rediscover his conversations, his documents, the drawings that he made. […] We laughed a lot with Federico. Of life, of the world, and of himself.” ~ Ettore Scola

HOW Strange to be Named Federico is a film tribute to Federico Fellini, to his art and to his personality. Filmmaker Ettore Scola relives their first encounter within the offices of
the satirical newspaper Marc’Aurelio in the 1950’s, their mutual friends, including Marcello Mastroianni, and most of all the pleasure they shared in making films.

For the 20th anniversary of his death, HOW Strange to be Named Federico retraces the incredible trajectory of legendary Italian director Federico Fellini, and especially the great story of friendship that he shared with Ettore Scola, his cineaste compatriot, eleven years his junior. After ten years away from the cinematographic landscape, the director of Down and Dirty (1976) gets behind the camera once more to evoke the man who was both a mentor and a friend, and whose journey was often intertwined with his own – from their beginnings at the Marc’Aurelio newspaper to their world legacy as filmmakers, via their mutual friendship with Marcello Mastroianni. In realizing this film tribute, Ettore Scola uses a strong and atypical aesthetic, as his work is a cross between a documentary, presenting a number of archival elements, and of a quasi-experimental film reconstruction – with Scola’s grandsons playing the roles of the two filmmakers in their youth. Celebrated at the Venice Film Festival 2013, HOW Strange to be Named Federico chronicles, in the most beautiful and inventive way, the life and extraordinary career of a cinematic legend, Federico Fellini.