A Roman gladiator of the football pitch, felled by injury, only to be reborn as a thespian conquering South African screens? Darling, it’s not a plot; it’s Federico Ancillai’s life. We simply had to dissect this operatic journey of love, legacy, and learning the agony of early restaurant closings. #LaDolceVitaMeetsJozi
If one were to sketch a blueprint for a life less ordinary, it would undoubtedly resemble the exquisite, sun-drenched contours of Federico Ancillai’s biography. Picture, if you will, a Roman son, a professional calcio player whose destiny was written in the grass stains of a soccer pitch from the tender age of three. But destiny, my dears, is a fickle couturier, and it snipped that athletic thread with the cruel shears of injury.
At twenty-one, adrift in that ghastly purgatory between what was and what will be, our hero did not simply stumble; he pivoted. With a family fairly marinating in the film industry, we’re speaking Hollywood sets as his childhood playground, darlings, the transition was less a leap of faith and more a homecoming. “A try of a month in an acting workshop,” he demurs, with the understatement of a man who knows a single month was all it would take to ignite the fuse.
But the plot, as it must, thickened. At an Amsterdam film festival, a chance encounter, a meeting of eyes across a crowded room, no doubt, led to a seismic life shift worthy of the most breathless silver screen romance. Love at first sight. A one-month trip to South Africa that never ended. For love, he traded the cobblestones of Rome for the electric energy of Johannesburg. “I don’t like regrets,” he states, and one can feel the quiet conviction. Although, the adjustment, darling, the adjustment! “In Italy at 10pm it is normal to go to a restaurant… you have to learn again so many things.”
Yet, what is a protagonist without a challenge? With his partner, a dazzling actress in her own right, he channeled the pandemic’s oppressive stillness into creation, founding a film production company. Their first project, a documentary on South African social issues, was a two-year labour of love that has since been showered with international nominations and applause, a testament to putting “110%” into everything.
And then, the pièce de résistance. Television, that fickle beast, came calling. Federico debuted as Marco on Binnelanders, etching his name into history as the first Italian actor ever cast on South African television, and on an Afrikaans show, no less. “A dream come true,” he sighs, describing a set of such professionalism it felt effortless. One simply shudders with delight for him.
From sharing the screen with Springbok legend Faf de Klerk in a major television advert to his relentless pursuit of “quality jobs,” Federico Ancillai is a masterclass in renaissance. His advice? “Never give up. I had so many no’s… but if you never give up and give always your best, the moment of success will arrive for sure.”
It’s a philosophy, a mantra, a way of life. And from where I’m sitting, darlings, it looks absolutely divine.
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