Labate, Wilma

(1949-)

   Director and screenwriter. After studying philosophy at the University of Rome, Labate began working for the national RAI television network. In 1990, with a number of documentaries already to her credit, she made Ciro il piccolo (Little Ciro), a sort of documentary on the city of Naples, seen through the eyes of a young boy who wanders the streets for most of the night on his way to work at the fish markets in the early morning. Two years later Labate directed her first feature, Ambrogio (1992), the story of a young girl in Italy in the late 1950s who joins the Naval Academy in order to fulfill her aspirations of becoming a ship's captain. Following a number of other commercial documentaries, Labate's second feature, La mia generazione (My Generation, 1996), tackled the difficult theme of political terrorism in Italy in the early 1980s. Still regarded by many as her best work to date, it won the International Federation of Film Critics Prize and was put forward as the Italian nominee for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. After several other short films she directed Domenica (Sunday, 2001), the moving story of a rebellious 12-year-old street girl in Naples (named Domenica) and the relationship that develops between her and the terminally ill policeman charged with bringing her in to make a statement. Two years later, after collaborating on the group documentary Lettere dalla Palestina (Letters from Palestine, 2002), Labate produced and directed maledetta Mia (Cursed Be Mia, 2003), a documentary portrait of five anarchic young people all attempting to present their objections to the established social system. Still passionately left-wing in her political orientation, in 2005 Labate published Il ragazzo con la maglietta a strisce (The Boy with the Striped Jumper), a book-length interview with the former leader of the Communist Refoundation Party, Fausto Bertinotti.