Fortunata has a difficult life, she’s the mother of an eight year old daughter with a failed marriage behind her. She works as a hairdresser in people’s houses, leaving from the outskirts to cross the city, going to the homes of the well-off to do women’s hair. Fortunata fights every day with determination to achieve her dream: opening her own salon and challenging fate, in an attempt to emancipate herself and gain her independence and the right to some happiness. She knows that to achieve her dreams she has to be firm: she has thought of everything, she is ready for anything, but she had not considered the variable of love, the one subversive force capable of sweeping aside every certainty. Also because, perhaps for the first time, someone looks at her as the woman she is and truly loves her.

This is how the director sees his protagonist:
"’Fortunata’ is a singular feminine qualifying adjective. But it is also a woman’s name. And, above all, a destiny. And it may be that this destiny is undeserved. There are men in this story who do not agree about Fortunata’s happiness. We will see..."
The dramaturgy of this story is directly suggested by the characters. It is Fortunata herself, and her primordial and disjointed nature which indicates the composition of the story. The events, the twists, are the natural and inevitable fruit of her behaviour. Because this woman’s material life conceals another, made up of psyches, suppressed dreams, a mysterious pattern that will be formed. Fortunata cannot remember her dreams, but it will be those dreams that change her reality. And love, naturally. Love is a revolutionary force, the only one that always drags us way off. For love, this imperfect, impulsive, hungry, needy woman will lose all her certainties, she will change but will arrive at another idea of herself. Every character in this story, Chicano, Patrizio, Franco, Lotte … is the bearer a destiny, highly personal, yes, but recognisable to everyone, I believe. And absolutely very human.
We will recount their fairy tale from the outskirts of town.

Actor, screenwriter and director, Sergio Castellitto has appeared in a number of major European films such as The Family by Ettore Scola, The Big Blue by Luc Besson, The Star Maker by Giuseppe Tornatore, The Great Pumpkin by Francesca Archibugi, Who Knows? by Jacques Rivette, Caterina in the Big City by Paolo Virzì, The Missing Star by Gianni Amelio, The Wedding Director and My Mother’s Smile by Marco Bellocchio, Mostly Martha by Sandra Nettlebeck, and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian by Andrew Adamson.In the last few years he has dedicated himself to direction, with the following films: YOU CAN'T SAVE YOURSELF ALONE (2015); TWICE BORN (2012); LOVE AND SLAPS (2010); DON'T MOVE (2004) - Presented at Festival de Cannes - Un certain Regard; Libero Burro (1998).

Filmography:

2015 YOU CAN’T SAVE YOURSELF ALONE
2012 TWICE BORN
2010 LOVE AND SLAPS
2004 DON’T MOVE
1998 LIBERO BURRO