Isabella Rossellini: My Wild Life

Gero von Boehm, Director

2010 | 56 | Feature

Born into of one of the most famous marriages between two artistic legends of the past century, she herself became a superstar, a living legend. Model, muse, actress and now experimental filmmaker, she has been in the public eye for more than 30 years. Before this documentary, hardly any star has spoken as frankly and authentically as Isabella Rossellini about the trappings of a life in the limelight. As the daughter of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini, she grew up in between every day life of school in Rome and world fame. In various film productions she worked with her father behind the scenes and later acted as the producer of Roberto Benigni (“La Vita e Bella”) for Italian television. The 27-year-old wife of “Taxi Driver” director Martin Scorsese she came to New York in the late 1970s, only to soon be discovered as a model by French magazine Vogue and the cosmetics corporation Lancôme.Quickly she became Cover Girl N°1 and her face more familiar to a younger generation than her mother’s. After knowing and loving David Lynch, she played the lead roles in his award-winning films Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart and soon became one of the world’s most famous film stars. She made her first steps as a director with her short film series Green Porno, premiering at the Berlinale Film Festival 2008 as a huge success. Currently she is preparing a second season on the sexual behavior of insects and sea-dwelling animals. Wildlife is becoming more and more of a passion for her. Now – in the documentary “My Wild Life” – she tells of the wild life of a world star, the story of the metamorphosis into a butterfly.The documentary “Isabella Rossellini - My Wild Life” on the one hand tells the story of Isabella Rossellini’s life and on the other hand, through the production preparations and filming of her second “Green Porno” series, the story of the animals she is just as passionate about as her father Roberto Rossellini used to be. The film plays with the metaphoric power of the animal kingdom and employs individual animal stories and excerpts of the “Green Pornos” as humoristic commentaries.