The IAB wishes to congratulate and support director Giovanni Meola, Honorary Fellow of the IAB, regarding the world premier of his feature documentary, La Conversione (The Conversion). The documentary has won the Audience Prize for Best Documentary, at the international renowned Rome Independent Film Festival (RIFF), that took place on the 2nd December 2020.
Giovanni Meola – IAB Honorary Fellow
Giovanni is a playwright, theatre director, film director, cultural organiser and artistic director, head of “Virus Teatro” company and winner of the “Enriquez Prize” in 2008. As a director he has worked at the National Theatre of Italy, staging his play “The day of the graduation” and at the Teatro Festival Italia, staging the “Trilogy of Indignation” by Catalan world-known playwright Esteve Soler (other Honorary Fellow of the IAB).
Giovanni was awarded an Honorary Fellow award at the IAB in 2019 for the works he developed with our MA Acting students during the previous years. This included directing them in Pirandello’s “The Man with the Flower in His Mouth” and in Meola’s original play “Love can be cruel”, which he decided to stage for the first time at the IAB in 2017. Giovanni returned to the IAB in 2018 to advise our MA Actors on their final project rehearsals and then in 2019 he delivered a master class on directing and acting monologue, working on a Franca Rame’s text.
About “The Conversion/La conversione”: Peppe, an ex-convict who spent 30 years in prison, today a playwright and actor, and the ex-manager Vincenzo, the first “deep throat” of the Italian banking system, today a consultant to protect against bank abuses, tell each other from writing, which allowed them to reconvert lives arrived at an unsustainable crossroads. The two dine together and know each other, opening up without any hesitation. Subtracting and deceiving have been the main activities of their existence for years, then they both said enough. Deciding to write two autobiographies, revealing the secrets of the worlds from which they come.
“The Coversion” at the Festival website: https://riff.it/en/the-conversion/
