"I want a horse!”
“Barbara, we live in a flat: where would we keep him?”
“On the balcony!”
“Sweetie, he won’t fit...”
“Well, then what about a Pony?”

The year is 1978, and while the Magliana Gang is raiding Rome, the Red Brigades are kidnapping Moro and Italy is set on fire by red and black terrorists... the four-year-old Barbara is asking for a Pony with her matter-of-fact, irresistible smile.

Five years later. the Etruscan movie theatre in Tarquinia.

“Zzzzzz...”
This is not Barbara snoring but her dad Carmelo. A lover of ‘classics’ like “Cream croissants” and “Paulo Roberto Cotechino” he really can’t make it through “Sophie’s choice”.
Were he awake, though, he would realize his daughter has just been touched by the Sacred Fire of cinephilia (just like years later she’ll be struck by the passion for cinophilia...).

Barbara walks out of the theatre a different person: Meryl Streep is now her Muse, Hollywood’s Red Carpet Ceremony will be her yearly TV appointment and the golden statuette a coveted prize to conquer!

She’ll endure five years of High-School dreaming of the first film she’s bound to direct, convinced that adolescence is nothing but a winding road to the Walk of Fame.

Her next Muse beside Meryl will be Kathryn Bigelow, since Barbara has now found out there’s not only actresses out there, but female directors - and gutsy ones, too!

She’ll get top grades for her BA with a thesis on Bigelow. Unfortunately round the corner there’s a fatal encounter waiting for her... with a guy named Leonardo.

1997: Barbara volunteers as director’s assistant on the set of “Life is beautiful”.

Leonardo is chosen as an extra for the same film (he’ll play a deported Jew: easy task, since at the time he looks like Christian Bale in “The machinist”...).

It’s their first meeting: they will only talk for a couple of minutes. Who could imagine that a few months later they will be an item?

They’re drawn together by the common passion for movies, and start planning right away to write and direct assorted zany projects.

Their first script is “A matter of Spirit”, a tribute to Bram Stoker, John Carpenter and Nando Cicero (!).

Someone even crazier than its authors decides to award it: the Festival of Saint Vincent will end up producing the short, shot in 3-days time on Hi-8 with analog editing and an all-Ternan cast & crew.

Yet unfulfilled, the Dynamic Duo sets out to film another short, in Betacam this time, produced by Rossella Belli and Sonia Berrettini (now owners of PARS Film).

The pic is called “Amorsi” (a gastronomic love story between a cook and his female customer, with an ultra-splatter ending) and is invited to a number of Festivals, where it’s well received by public and critics alike.

By now the duo has reached a familiar crossroads: should they stay amateurs or turn Pros? They choose the second path, setting direction aside and specializing on writing. After taking two seminars funded by RAI and MEDIASET, they are finally hired by Pietro Valsecchi and Camilla Nesbitt’s TAODUE.

And this is where their shiny TV career starts.

In 2003 they will be joined in marriage. Could it be a normal wedding? No way! The scenery of choice? The Nevada desert...

They’re currently dividing their time between Rome and the Umbrian country, along with their two splendid Dalmatians…