A David Speciale for Enrico Vanzina, director and screenwriter, but no recognition for his brother Carlo, also director, who died in Rome on July 8, 2018. An “oversight” that the widow Lisa Melidoni points the finger at and accuses the jury that David (whose award ceremony will be held in Rome on May 10) has “excluded” her husband, “humiliating his memory”. “With my daughters,” Melidoni Ansa said, “we found out how the Accademia del David di Donatello has already forgotten Carlo Vanzina, my husband, her father. Giving his brother an award and not giving Carlo credit was a gesture of ingratitude to a director who has made well over 60 films. A great gentleman of Italian cinema in the opinion of all those who have worked on him for more than 40 years of esteemed career».
Carlo Vanzina, Melidoni continues, was “a master, a humble man, not from modesty but from innate refinement; always on tiptoe, never evasive nor arrogant nor craving for protagonism on the contrary, of those who boast of inaccurate truths to always be the center of undeserved attention. “Dear jury of the David – concludes the “j’accuse” of the widow Vanzina with bitterness -, with the same superficiality that awards this prize, you have marginalized a great protagonist, an author of Italian comedy and his memory not demeaned after I recognized him, not even post mortem his infinite devotion to our cinema, because we know that whoever was loved so much in life will be forgotten in death by the indifferent.”