Marco Chimenz

Since the 1998 release of the well-received musical fantasy "The Legend of 1900," producer Marco Chimenz has been an important link between the United States and Italian film industries. Chimenz worked for several years as the executive vice president of Medusa Films, which specialized in the production and distribution of Italian films, and struck out on his own with the formation of Cattleya Productions. Chimenz's first film, "The Legend of 1900," won numerous awards for its sweet and sad story of a musically gifted man (Tim Roth) living aboard a passenger ship, and marked the English-language debut of Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore ("Cinema Paradiso"). He next produced Franco Zeffirelli's semi-autobiographical "Tea with Mussolini," about a young boy adopted by a group of wealthy expatriate British women in pre-Fascist Italy; with a cast that included Cher, Judi Dench, and Maggie Smith, the film proved a critical and commercial success. After producing "Ripley's Game," a sequel to "The Talented Mr. Ripley" starring John Malkovitch in the title role, Chimenz worked on "I'm Not Scared," a tense psychological thriller about a young boy who makes a startling discovery. In 2005, he helped co-produce the sprawling gangster epic "Romanzo criminale," and its subsequent adaptation into a TV miniseries. Chimenz has also produced the family drama "My Brother Is an Only Child," which details the volatile relationship between a leftist Italian revolutionary and his fascist brother.