Very likely by divine birthright, Nino – A Film About Nino Rota, a full-blown theatrical documentary devoted to the Italian master composer, has had its world premiere at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, playing, equally self-evidently, in the official “Film on Films” category, out of competition.

For Giovanni “Nino” Rota (1911-1979) is, of course, he who created a full symphony for Visconti's The Leopard, sculpted timeless love themes for Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet and Coppola's The Godfather, and dreamt up the musical cornucopia of every Fellini flick over three decades. At his finest, he all but wrote the soundtrack for an entire nation, rising out of the post-war ashes into a dolce boom in the 1950s and 1960s.

Walter Fasano, a prolific film editor, notably on six features with Luca Guadagnino (on which he at times contributed to both soundtrack and screenplay), takes on the mission of building a personal monument to the maestro – a moniker of twofold significance, given Rota's position as director at the Bari Music Conservatory, a capacity he maintained for 30 years.

In contrast to Ennio, Giuseppe Tornatore's 2021 tribute to another Italian music master, Ennio Morricone (who's never mentioned here), Nino omits any cavalcade of movie personalities and musical luminaries checking in to reminisce or merely swoon. An enjoyable exception is Italian pop icon Rita Pavone, who revisits her 1964 hit song “Viva la pappa col pomodoro”, written by Rota and Lina Wertmüller (who shows up in archive footage). Composer Alexandre Desplat and director Park Chan-wook provide contemporary voices, and the narration is executed by Sting, as luminous a personality as they come.

For some main testimonies, Fasano goes to Bari, Rota's creative haven of choice. At the conservatory, we experience the US jazz arranger Vince Mendoza conducting a full orchestra, mainly made up of faculty students and alumni, performing Rota compositions – excellently, at that. Art and music experts, some of whom have had personal encounters, recount and reflect, among them gallery curator Jean Blanchaert, Rota's nephew. An even closer relative (for years unknowingly) is Rota's daughter Nina, movingly revisiting her past. A recurring voice throughout is provided by Caterina D’Amico, former Rai Cinema CEO and daughter of Suso Cecchi D’Amico, who wrote scripts for films like Bicycle Thieves and Rocco and his Brothers, and befriended Rota as a teen in 1920s Rome. D'Amico's account of a lunch in the early 1970s when Rota complained about annoying Hollywood offers (“And now they want me to work on 'The Stepfather' or something!”) is a delight. The same can be said of the rich footage of Rota himself, where we see him cheerfully relaxed and a tad aloof (and, as we find out, prone to some quite profound mysticism), ever the maestro of his domain.

Occasionally, he was ridiculed for his film work in both “classical” and radical circles, and he never ceased writing “serious” music, heard here to impressive effect. It still pales in comparison to the simple trumpet motif from La Strada, the cheekily alluring Anita theme from La Dolce Vita or the racy milk-ad ditty from Boccaccio ‘70 – “Bevete più latte!”

Nino – A Film About Nino Rota is an Italian production staged by Be Water Film, Sugar Play, Adler Entertainment and I Diavoli. Its international sales are overseen by Global Constellation.