The Italian film director Ermanno Olmi has chosen this area as the setting of his novel, Il ragazzo della Bovisa ("The boy from the Bovisa").
Olmi's films fit into the artistic mold of Italian neorealism, though Olmi would argue (and does argue, in an interview found on the Criterion Edition DVD of his 1961 film, Il Posto) that this is the artistic tradition he is responding against because, he claimed, he used non-actors in authentic locations whereas neorealism used professional actors.
•
In 1988, his La leggenda del santo bevitore (The Legend of the Holy Drinker), based on the novel by Joseph Roth and starring Rutger Hauer, won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival as well as a David di Donatello award.
•
He is married to Loredana Detto, who played Antonietta Masetti in Il Posto.
Part of Luoghi immaginari, which was composed between 1987 and 1992 and consists of various pieces for various instrumental formations, was included, along with other works of Vacchi, in the soundtrack of The Profession of Arms by Ermanno Olmi.
After ending his study at the Milan Film School (1977) he took on work in Ermanno Olmi Film Factory and at the same time developed several short movies.
After spending several years in theatre, she returned to film in 2001 by starring in Ermanno Olmi's film The Profession of Arms and Giuseppe Piccioni's Light of My Eyes, for which she won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 2001 Venice Film Festival.
She was present at the 2005 Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, to promote two films she had acted in: Tickets (2005), a three-segment film directed by Ermanno Olmi, Abbas Kiarostami, and Ken Loach, and Crustacés et Coquillages, a comedy directed by the French duo of Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau.