Rulli, Stefano

(1949-)

   Film historian and screenwriter. After convening a historic conference on neorealism at the Pesaro Young Cinema Festival in 1974, Rulli collaborated with Marco Bellocchio, Silvano Agosti, and Sandro Petraglia in writing and directing Nessuno o tutti—Matti da slegare (Fit to Be Untied, 1975), a three-hour documentary on Italian mental asylums, and La macchina cinema (The Cinema Machine, 1979), a five-part television documentary on the seamier aspects of the Italian film industry. He subsequently teamed up regularly with Petraglia to write several popular television series, including the long-running La piovra (Octopus, 1987-1994) and many of the key films made by the directors of the so-called New Italian Cinema, among them Daniele Luchetti's Ilportaborse (The Yes Man, 1991) and Gianni Amelio's Il ladro di bambini (The Stolen Children, 1992). Together Rulli and Petraglia achieved their greatest success scripting Marco Tullio Giordana's six-hour epic, La meglio gioventu (The Best of Youth, 2003), for which they received both the David di Donatello and the Nastro d'argento. In 2004 Rulli's own Un silenzio particolare (A Particular Silence), a documentary fiction about autism, was awarded the prize for digital film at the Venice Festival. Rulli has since collaborated once again with Petraglia on the screenplays of Giordana's Quando sei nato non puoi piu nasconderti (Once You're Born You Can No Longer Hide, 2005) and Michele Placido's Romanzo criminale (Crime Novel, 2005), the latter earning them both another David di Donatello award.