Cucinelli's Docufilm Heads to Shanghai Festival
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- "Brunello: The Gracious Visionary", a docudrama by Oscar winner Giuseppe Tornatore about Italian fashion designer Brunello Cucinelli, will screen at the Shanghai International Film Festival after premiering at Rome's Cinecittà Studios and Lincoln Center in New York
- The film opens theatrically on July 24 in the U.S., Canada, U.K., and Ireland, with more than a dozen international territories to follow; Cucinelli's company carries a market capitalization of more than $7.8 billion
- Cucinelli said the Shanghai Film Festival's invitation letter praised the film for its "deep commitment to beauty and cultural heritage," and that prints are being prepared in 16 languages for the world tour, though his own voice will never be dubbed
- Cucinelli credited Mongolian cashmere as essential to his business — "Without the cashmere that I get from Mongolia I would not be able to do what I do" — and said he has been doing business with China since 1989
- On Friday, Cucinelli accepted the Golden Globes Prize for Documentary on behalf of Tornatore at Italy's Taormina Film Festival, held in an open-air ancient Greek amphitheater in the shadow of Mt. Etna
- Cucinelli told Variety he believes "a new world order is coming" and "this is China's century," while declining to comment on China's economic methodology, saying the shared values are "achieving harmony between cultures; and slow, gracious [economic] growth"
Why it matters: A $7.8 billion luxury brand is making a deliberate soft-power bet that a film about fair wages, artisanal Italian manufacturing, and a renovated medieval village can translate to Chinese audiences — and Cucinelli is publicly calling it "China's century" while selling the documentary as a brand-marketing tool. The Shanghai screening is the first international stop on a 16-language world tour that will gauge whether "humanistic capitalism" travels as a luxury narrative.
