Paolo Virzì (born March 4, 1964) is an Italian film director, writer and producer. Virzì was born in Livorno, Italy in 1964, as the son of a Sicilian police officer in the Carabinieri and a former singer. After spending his early childhood in Turin in the north of Italy, Virzì's family moved back to Livorno where he grew up in the working class area of “Le Sorgenti”. As a small boy, he started to cultivate his lifelong passion for literature: Mark Twain and Charles Dickens were among his favourite authors and their classic “coming of age” novels would later serve as a model for his screenplays. As a teenager, Virzì's versatility was already in evidence as he threw himself into writing, directing and acting in plays for drama companies in Livorno. He formed an artistic partnership with his schoolmate Francesco Bruni, who would later become his trusted co-screenwriter. For a time, Paolo attended Literature and Philosophy classes at Pisa University and shot some short films and a few longer features that have since vanished in the annals of time. He then left Livorno for Rome, where he studied screenwriting at the historic Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia film school, graduating in 1987. His teachers included prestigious film director, Gianni Amelio and the screenwriter of some of the greatest Italian movies of all time, Furio Scarpelli: Scarpelli was to play a crucial role in Virzì's life, becoming his mentor and his guide, his “maestro” in other words. Paolo co-wrote with Scarpelli the screenplay for Giuliano Montaldo’s Tempo di uccidere, based on the novel by Ennio Flaiano and starring Nicolas Cage. Between the late 1980s and early 1990s, he also co-wrote the screenplays of Turnè (On Tour) (1990) directed by Gabriele Salvatores, Condominio (1991) directed by Felice Farina and Centro Storico (1982) directed by Roberto Giannarelli. He also worked with the famous Neapolitan writer Raffaele La Capria on a TV movie A Private Affair directed by Alberto Negrin and adapted from the novel Una questione privata (A Private Affair) by Beppe Fenoglio, starring young British actor and star of Room with a View, Rupert Graves.

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