The novel C’era una volta a Roma, the narrative debut of director and screenwriter Manuel de Teffé, won two important awards at the Sergio Leone – Città di Roma Prize: the First Prize for the Narrative and Writing section, awarded by the jury coordinated by Denise Furlan, and the Matrice Leone Prize, awarded by the internal commission of Ipermedia CDE.
The award ceremony took place at the Notebook bookshop in the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, in the presence of actors Gianni Garko – a great supporter of the novel – and Corrado Solari, together with directors and screenwriters Romolo Guerrieri and Ernesto Gastaldi. The initiative, conceived and organized by Ipermedia CDE, is coordinated by Carlo Pepe, president of Ipermedia, and Fabrizio De Priamo, artistic director of the Award, with the patronage of the Lazio Region, the Department of Culture of Roma Capitale, Sapienza University of Rome, Confassociazioni, and Confassociazioni Spettacolo.
“I sincerely thank the entire jury of the Sergio Leone Award,” said de Teffé, “for the attention with which they read the 500 pages of my novel. Finally, a never-before-told page of Italian customs is coming to light: that of La Dolce Vita overwhelmed by the cultural revolution of the Italian Western, of which my father, Anthony Steffen, was one of the protagonists.”
C’era una volta a Roma has already won numerous awards in 2024: the Primo Premio Letterario La Ginestra di Firenze, the Bond Street Award in London, and the Premio Internazionale Donne d’Amore from the Naschira Association in Venice. Information, presentations, and updates are available on the official website: www.ceraunavoltaaroma.net.
A snapshot of Rome in 1965
Set in the capital at the height of La Dolce Vita and the protests against the Vietnam War, the novel opens at the moment when Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars explodes onto the world stage, giving rise to the Italian Western.
In this climate of cultural transformation, a PR manager at the Hilton Hotel tries to convince her partner to embrace the new film genre. In the background, the stories of an aristocratic Shakespearean actor, a Russian acting teacher, a Jewish documentary filmmaker, and a breadstick entrepreneur who dreams of turning his manuscript into the film No Money for Django intertwine.
A novel rooted in the author’s family history
The work is inspired by the author’s father, Antonio de Teffé von Hoonholtz, a Roman actor of Prussian origin who, between the 1960s and 1970s, starred in twenty-seven films of the genre under the stage name Anthony Steffen, becoming the most prolific star of spaghetti westerns.
In 2007, during the retrospective curated by Quentin Tarantino at the Venice Film Festival, Manuel de Teffé presented Sergio Garrone’s Una lunga fila di croci (A Long Line of Crosses), the film that marked his father’s debut on the big screen.
“From that moment on,” he says, “I slowly began to piece together a flock of memories related to the birth of that genre. C’era una volta a Roma recounts a world I witnessed firsthand: Rome in 1965, the spaghetti western revolution at the epicenter of La Dolce Vita, and the incredible characters who populated it. I decided to write the legend and send it to press, just as John Ford warns in his Print the legend!.”
The author
Manuel de Teffé, Roman, director, and screenwriter, studied set design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and graduated in film directing from Angelo D’Alessandro’s M.I.F.
He began at the Teatro Eliseo as assistant director to Rossella Falk and Michele Placido, continued as a television director for Morgan Film and Lux Vide, and later founded Shineout, with which he directed commercials, documentaries, and music videos around the world. He was artistic director for the French group Média-Participations. Today he lives in Paris and works as a director and screenwriter for SAJE Distribution.
C’era una volta a Roma (Once Upon a Time in Rome) is his first novel.
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