"Brunello - Il visionario garbato" and the journey to the origins of the designer The film is directed by Giuseppe Tornatore and the music is by maestro Nicola Piovani

“I am an entrepreneur. However, I have to admit it, if I could have chosen, I would have liked to be the Pope”. In the end, it was a monk’s life that Brunello Cucinelli desired, going back and forth from the bell tower of his village to home and spending evenings in front of the fire. Things, however, turned out differently. To find out more, you can go to the cinema from December 9 for Brunello - Il visionario garbato, a work about the stylist and industrialist from Castel Rigone, in the province of Perugia, which retraces his life and career through the lens of Oscar-winning director Giuseppe Tornatore, accompanied by his friend and master Nicola Piovani, who composed the soundtrack. “I told myself that I didn’t want them to make a film about me when I was dead, but to give viewers the chance to hear my voice. And I wanted Giuseppe to direct it because Nuovo Cinema Paradiso is the film closest to my heart”.

Tornatore made him wait, but in the end if Brunello wants something, Brunello gets it. “I didn’t know him well”, the director and screenwriter recounts during the meeting at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, after a special première of Brunello - Il visionario garbato in the capital, held no less than in the scenic studios of Cinecittà. A preview full of international stars, from Jonathan Bailey to Jessica Chastain, from Jeff Goldblum to Bianca Balti. The director continues: “When I was first asked to work on this project I was reluctant, but as his wife Federica says, when Brunello wants something he doesn’t let go until he gets it. So I asked for a bit of time to think about it and find an idea around which to build the work. I chose his relationship with card games. And I have to say that I was given great freedom. Usually when making a docufilm about someone you think they’ll want to add or remove things as they please, but Brunello trusted me completely”.

It could not have been otherwise, given that Cucinelli adores Tornatore’s work, whom he defines as a poet-director and with whom he would love to work again, perhaps by producing a film for him: “I proposed it to him”, reveals the stylist. “But only if he makes a love story. We all need it so much”. For Brunello Cucinelli, in fact, only what is beautiful and warms the soul is destined to last. The work instead of its author, art instead of its artist. And that is what he wishes for his legacy as well. A legacy that in Brunello - Il visionario garbato communicates between past and present, in a film (as the stylist prefers to call it, rather than a documentary) that uses little archival material, partly due to its scarcity, but largely by choice of Tornatore and his desire to reconstruct Cucinelli’s life to give the work the necessary cinematic touch.

And if it was necessary to restage his life from the beginning, there was also a need for someone to interpret him. Thus, Saul Nanni joined the project, an actor seen in 2025 in the Netflix adaptation of The Leopard and soon in cinemas with Nicolangelo Gelormini’s second feature film, La gioia, in which he stars alongside Valeria Golino and Jasmine Trinca. “I met Giuseppe and the first thing he told me was: for me the most important thing is that you know how to play cards”, laughs Nanni. “I admit, I didn’t have Brunello’s gestures, but I tried to learn, I went to his hometown, for me it was important to walk day and night through his land, to hear the stories people had to tell about him. Everyone stopped me because they wanted to tell me something”. To discover the origins and the contribution to luxury and fashion of the Italian stylist, all that remains is to go to the cinema on the 8th, 9th and 10th of December for the special release of Brunello - Il visionario garbato.