Italian auteur Nanni Moretti suffered a heart attack on Wednesday and is reportedly in intensive care in stable condition, according to Italian news reports.
The 71-year-old idiosyncratic director, actor and screenwriter, who won the 2001 Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for “The Son’s Room,” was rushed in the afternoon to Rome’s San Camillo hospital where he underwent surgery. Italian news agency Ansa reported that he was in stable condition.
Moretti previously suffered a mild heart attack in October last year.
Known as an acerbic moralist and social commentator, Moretti most recently competed in Cannes in 2023 with high-concept meta-comedy “A Brighter Tomorrow,” in which he stars as a Roman director who is shooting a period piece set in Rome in 1956.
Before being hospitalized he was in pre-production on a new film, details of which are not known.
Moretti has often constructed his films around his own persona, appearing as the central character, starting with his 1976 Super-8 debut “Io Sono un’Autarchico” and its follow-up, “Ecce Bombo,” which humorously captured the discontent gripping Italy in the bleak 1970s, and, of course, the autobiografical “Caro Diario,” 1994, which marked his international breakthrough. Subsequent standout works comprise scathing 2006 Silvio Berlusconi satire “The Caiman” and “We Have a Pope” in which he depicted a Pontiff’s crisis of faith.
Moretti last month attended a retrospective of his work at the Bari International Film & TV Festival in southern Italy.
He was celebrated in 2024 with a Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival for the restaured version of “Ecce Bombo” which screened in the Venice Classics section.