In the Name of the Father, the Daughter, and the Holy Spirits

‘Few children grow up to honour the centenary of their father’s by making a film and publishing a book with its script at its centre, alongside letters between her parents, commentary from the likes of Truffaut and Fellini, numerous drawings and some implausibly glamorous photographs.’
The Observer

An homage to the father she loved so dearly, compiled by Isabella Rossellini, who as a film actress and Lancôme icon has long since become an international star in her own right.

Alongside countless photos from the family album, including some hitherto unpublished pictures of Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman, as well as stills from Rossellini’s famous movies Rome, Open City, Stromboli, and Germany Year Zero, the book also contains a wealth of accounts by his daughter Isabella and wife Ingrid, and others who were close to the great director and his work including Frederico Fellini, François Truffaut, and Eric Rohmer, portrayed Roberto Rossellini as a father, husband, ladies’ man, and as a consistently innovative film director. He himself, that master of Neo-Realism, is present in the form of personal statements, containing his thoughts on the essence of acting and on the meaning of scripts, locations and producers of his œuvre.

But at the heart of this book lies the script of a short film Isabella Rossellini wrote and illustrated, dedicated to her father to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth. It is a film that playfully evokes the holy and not-s0-holy spirits of her father’s film past with great humour. Isabella assumes the roles of his companions and colleagues, from Hitchcock to Charlie Chaplin, and conducts a fictitious conversation with her father.

ISABELLA ROSSELLINI, daughter of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini, born in 1952, grew up in Rome and Paris. When she was 19, she went to New York, where she began a career as an actress in the movies, especially under the direction of David Lynch, and became world famous as the exclusive model of the cosmetics giant Lancôme. Her books Some of Me and Looking at Me were international bestsellers.

ROBERTO ROSSELLINI, born on 8 May 1906 in Rome, was one of the most innovative and stylistically ground-breaking directors of the post-war period. His most important films cast ordinary people alongside major stars, such as Anna Magnani, in Rome, Open City (1945) and Ingrid Bergman in Stromboli (1950). He was married to Ingrid Bergman from 1950 to 1957 and had three children with her, one of them Isabella. Roberto Rossellini died in Rome in 1977.