Through interviews with directors, screenwriters, musicians, songwriters, critics and collaborators, Tornatore’s documentary retraces the life and works of the cinema’s most popular and prolific 20th century composer – who wrote over 500 scores for film & television and sold over 70 million records – from his cinema debut with Sergio Leone, to winning an Academy Award
® for The Hateful Eight in 2016.
The documentary tells it through a long interview by Tornatore with the Maestro, testimonies of artists and directors, such as Bertolucci, Montaldo, Bellocchio, Argento, the Taviani, Verdone, Barry Levinson, Roland Joffè, Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino – fictional scenes, music and archival images.
Ennio is also an investigation aimed at revealing what little is known about Morricone. Like his passion for chess, which perhaps has mysterious ties to his music. But also the realistic origin of some of his musical intuitions as happens for the scream of the coyote that suggests the theme of The good, the ugly, the bad, or the rhythmic clapping of the hands on some tin cans by the strikers in the head to a protest procession through the streets of Rome that inspired him with the beautiful theme of Sosenga Pereira. An aptitude for invention that is confirmed by his constant love for absolute music, and his vocation for persistent experimentation.