08/04/2003

Vanna Paoli dedicated her latest film, The Accidental Detective, to her home city of Florence, and to all the artists its beauty has inspired through the ages.
The film was made with financial support from the Italian Ministry for Culture although the much-vaunted American capital did not, in the end, come through due to a serious of bureaucratic foul-ups. The film has the pace and rhythm of a treasure hunt, and is a finely balanced mix of humour and suspence.
Following the demise of an American art collector, his family learns that the man bought an historic palazzo in central Florence. They ask their legal representative, David Baley, to investigate the reasons for this purchase and Baley packs his bags and heads for Florence where he encounters a city full of mysteries that he is determined to unravel. He soon finds himself on the tracks of a hitherto unknown painting by Renaissance-master Sandro Botticelli.
Based on “La Scritta sul Vetro” by Cristina Acidini, supervisor of the Precious Stones department of Florence’s Uffizi Museum, the film tweaks history and focuses on art. “When I read the book, I experienced the same excitement as when I walked through the streets of Florence, looking at the antique facades of the palaces,” said Paoli. “That was what inspired me to make this film.”
The Accidental Detective was made almost entirely on location in Florence’s Palazzo Capponi and Palazzo della Lana, but the production process was neither quick nor easy. “It took me four years to get this film made and if it weren't for Mariano Arditi, I’d never have finished it,” said Paoli not without bitterness. She even commissioned Florentine restaurer and artist, Caterina Toso, to make a perfect copy of Botticelli’s Diana kissing Endimiones. “The painting and the film ended up in the Art Institute of Chicago and they were presented during an exhibition dedicated to the Medici family. The exhibition is scheduled also to visit Detroit.”
The Accidental Detective will be released in Florence and Rome on 11 April.

(Translated from Italian)