The Birth of the Leopard

When Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa died in 1957, he was penniless. One year later, his only novel The Leopard was published and became an overnight success. Luchino Visconti’s eponymous film won the Palme D‘Or at Cannes in 1963. The story of how the book came to be written is largely unknown. It’s based on the relationship between the writer and his Baltic German wife and how they lost almost everything against the background of the massive upheavals in Europe and who nonetheless managed to reinvent themselves. (Filmfest Hamburg)