From a little war refugee, almost out of a movie by Rossellini, to pupil of James Watson up until the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2007. Mario Capecchi, the Italian who uprooted to America, who discovered how to silence genes, will be meeting the public in this extraordinary event which coincides with the film Hill of Vision on his adventurous childhood just finished by Roberto Faenza and co-produced by Rai Cinema. When his anti-Nazi mother was deported to a concentration camp, Capecchi found himself alone on the streets in the company of other lost children. Wasted and malnourished, after three years his mother – who had survived – found him in a hospital and they left for America, a decision which opened his life up to new opportunities. An unmissable chance for the public to look back at the remarkable life of this man and on his major scientific discoveries, with the aid of the film director and two brilliant researchers.

Mario Capecchi is an American molecular geneticist born in Verona in 1937. He obtained a degree in Chemistry and Physics in 1961 from Antioch College in Ohio and in 1967 a Ph.D. in "Biophysics" from Harvard University. He was Associate Professor at Harvard University's Faculty of Medicine until 1973, while later serving as Professor of Biology, Oncology Sciences and Human Genetics at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Among the countless awards we remember the "Kyoto prize" in 1996, the "Franklin" medal in 1997, the "National Medal for Science" in 2001, and the following year the "Wolf Prize for Medicine". In 2004 he was decorated with an honorary degree in "Medicine and Surgery" from the University of Florence. In 2007, together with the colleagues Oliver Smithies and Martin Evans, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the development of gene targeting techniques that led to the first "knockout" mouse.

Roberto Faenza, director, writer and university professor, graduated from Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and made his directorial debut in 1968 with the international success Escalation. Among his other films: Copkiller (1983) with Harvey Keitel and the leader of the Sex Pistols Johnny Rotten; The Bachelor (1990), based on the novel by Arthur Schnitzler, with Kristin Scott Thomas and Miranda Richardson; Jona who lived in the whale (1993), based on the true story of a child who survived Bergen Belsen concentration camp; Pereira maintains (1995), Marcello Mastroianni's last Italian film; The Lost Lover (1999), based on the novel by Abraham B. Yehoshua; The Soul Keeper, inspired by the passion between Carl Gustav Jung and his young patient Sabina Spielrein; The Days of Abandonment (2005), based on the novel by Elena Ferrante; Someday this pain will be useful to you (2011), based on the novel by Peter Cameron with Ellen Burstyn, Marcia Gay Harden and Lucy Liu; The truth lies in heaven (2016), on the controversial disappearance, back in 1983, of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15 years old Vatican citizen.

Elisa Balzano is a PhD student in Genetics and Molecular Biology at Sapienza University of Rome in the laboratory of Molecular Cytogenetics of Prof. Franca Pelliccia and under the supervision of Prof. Simona Giunta. After obtaining a three-year degree in Biological Sciences, Elisa continued her training with a Master's Degree in Genetics and Molecular Biology at Sapienza University of Rome with 110/110 cum laude. Her research focuses on specific "fragile" regions of the human genome, often involved in gene and genetic diseases. Her passion for science, and in particular for biology, was born from the time of high school studying DNA, a structure so small and vulnerable but also so creative that it can generate new complexity such as to enclose our entire evolutionary history.

Marta Marzullo was born in Terracina (LT) in 1989. In 2013 he graduated with honors in Genetics and Molecular Biology at the Sapienza University of Rome, then obtained a PhD at the same university with a thesis on the regulation of genome stability in Drosophila melanogaster. In 2018 she moved to Lisbon (PT) to the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC) where he studied the relationship between aging, inflammation and cancer in the Zebrafish model organism. Back in Italy, in 2021 she won the lazio region's call "Vitamina G-Bando delle idee" thanks to which she founded the "Laboratorio11" association which aims to bring the general public closer to science and culture.

Informazioni

Entrance ticket to the exhibitions and the meeting: special rate of € 4.00, from 6.00pm, until places last

Palazzo delle Esposizioni - Rotonda

via Nazionale 194