Born on 19 August 1953, in Brunico, in the Bolzano province in the Northernmost part of Italy where his family was on a trip, Moretti lives in Rome. A self-taught filmmaker whose parents were academics, he also played in water polo first division in Italy, and in the junior national team in 1970. Once finished high school studies, he sold his stamps collection to buy a Super 8 camera, using which he started shooting home-made short films with his friends in 1973. He was very young when he became known by the public and to film critics thanks to his feature-length film lo sono un autarchico / I am Self-Sufficient (1976) which he made on Super 8. It was the only possible way to make oneself known without having to go through the traditional forms of apprenticeship to which most directors had been obliged.

"Enfant prodigy" of the Italian film industry in the 1970s, undisputed maestro in Europe in the 1980s, cult phenomenon in the 1990s, Nanni Moretti the director, the actor, the producer, distributor and retailer opposed a pungent moral and artistic intransigence to the invasive cultural dullness and indifference of this age. From the early 1970s, when his first Super 8 shorts were a hit with Roman cinema clubs, to his latest success at Cannes, the 48-year-old Moretti has not only written and directed but played the lead in each of his films most often as Michele Apicella, a resilient alter ego in the tradition of Chaplin's and Keaton's, based on his own obsessions and neuroses.

Moretti masterfully uses his wry, self-deprecating humour to create anxiety-inducing scenarios and to rebel against mainstream culture and politics. His films integrate everything from family values to radical Leftist politics - biting social satire, warm-hearted romance and cry-from-the-abyss tragedy into magnificently satisfying, all-encompassing narratives. Ecce Bombo, actor-writer-director Nanni Moretti's second feature film, shot in l6mm in 1978, has turned him into an overnight sensation in the Italian film world. This was followed three years later by the highly individualistic and precocious Sogni D'oro, his first film in 35mm and his equivalent of Fellini's Otto e Mezzo / 8 ½. A deserving prize-winner at Cannes, Nanni Moretti's Caro Diario, effortlessly straddling the divide between documentary and fiction, is one of the best Italian films of recent years. A cult figure at home, Moretti has created a wonderful guide to contemporary Italy, which effortlessly combines the comic and the serious, the personal and the political.