Cinzia Bomoll and LA California

Sometimes you have to put yourself in your total opposite’s shoes in order to be the woman you want to become, and even if that’s the dearest person you have in the world, you must fight her. If then the background of your story, ironically enough, is a village called La California, its weird people “on the border” might intertwine with your life and, in the end, rescue you. LA California is an independent Italian feature film directed by Cinzia Bomoll.

Born into a family of nomadic origins, Cinzia Bomoll grew up in the province of Bologna and began making short films, writing, directing, editing and producing on a low budget at 17.

She graduated in Film from the Faculty of Literary Subjects at the University of Bologna and moved to Rome, where she attended the RAI Script course, the Mediatrade Fiction School and the summer creative writing sessions of the Holden School.

She worked for several years as director for outside broadcasts for RAI TV, as writer and freelance camera operator for children's programmes.

In 2007 she wrote, directed and produced her first feature film, "Rahil's Secret", which tells the story of the young daughter of an Iraqi terrorist who observes the world through a child's eyes. Winner of the Unicef Award, it was distributed by Vanguard in the USA and Canada, then acquired by Netflix USA and recently by Amazon Prime. In 2010 she attended the ANICA production and distribution course.

In 2011 she directed “Balla with noi - Let’s dance”, a feature for Italian cinemas written by Massimiliano Bruno and produced by Rai Cinema and Aurora Film, the first Italian dance movie for teenagers, distributed in 13 countries.

For a period, she moved to the Mojave desert, California, maintaining contact with Italy as a writer of fiction (after entering a competition advertised on the radio for beginners in 1998, which saw the publication of one of her stories in the Einaudi - Stile Libero anthology “Quello che ho da dirvi”, and she has published four novels: “Lei che nelle foto non sorrideva” (Fazi, 2006 – Ianieri 2019), “Sessantanove” (Fazi, 2011), “Cuori a spigoli” (Ianieri, 2019) and “La ragazza che non c’era” (Ponte Alle Grazie, 2022).

In 2019, she won the Mibact Italy-Tunisia development award with the treatment of drama “Urla Mute”, now in development. In 2020, she won the Italy-Spain Solinas Prize with the treatment of horror film “Heste Hombre”, in development with Spain and horror screenwriter. In 2020, she won the Mibact Italy-Chile development award with the treatment of “Chi ha ucciso Lumi Videla” . Through this film she met Chilean producer Karina Yury, who was so taken by a rough draft of another of Bomoll's stories that she decided to co-produce it, leading to the shooting of "La California" (2022)