Francesco Carrozzini on Venice AI doc 'Be Brave' and Rosso
Francesco Carrozzini and his Venice Film Festival premiere, “Be Brave,” mark a bold experiment: an 85-minute portrait of Diesel founder Renzo Rosso built almost entirely with AI—without filming Rosso directly. The director insists that despite the tech, “the human has to come first” in storytelling.
New York-based Italian filmmaker Francesco Carrozzini told Variety that the project portrays Rosso as a visionary underdog who rose from poverty to a global fashion empire. Venice chief Alberto Barbera called it among the first AI features to launch from a top-tier festival, framing it as an invitation to rethink creative tools in cinema. For more festival and platform news, see our Streaming & TV Alerts hub.
Key Takeaways
- “Be Brave” runs 85 minutes and recreates Renzo Rosso at multiple life stages using AI, with no direct footage of its subject.
- Producer Lorenzo Mieli pitched the idea; Rome-based Our Films (a Mediawan company) backed the fully scripted doc.
- Real talking-head interviews appear alongside AI material drawn from archival TV footage and period photos.
- Carrozzini spent about 18 months on the film, redoing early AI work as tools rapidly evolved.
- The director says empathy matters more than whether viewers can spot what is AI-generated.
Why Did Carrozzini Use AI for This Project?
Mieli approached Carrozzini about Rosso after the director had stepped back from fashion to focus on narrative film and TV. Archival TV material existed, but Carrozzini found no strong interviews or intimate moments to anchor a traditional doc.
The team began testing AI to recreate missing scenes, then expanded the concept so the technology became both method and theme. Carrozzini stressed the film is not a thesis on AI—only a closing note that the human must lead.
How Was Rosso Recreated on Screen?
Carrozzini described the workflow as “a nightmare” until the team settled on a process. AI artist Roberto Beragnoli and company Blackstone handled much of the heavy lifting across months of trial and error.
Scenes used period photos of Rosso, then layered voice, lip sync, wardrobe, and behavior across ages. Carrozzini compared the workload to a major CGI feature: low-res AI output upscaled through multiple software tools, with material labeled like conventional footage for editors.
Does the Viewer Need to Know What Is AI?
Carrozzini said no. He wants audiences to laugh, empathize, and engage with Rosso’s real story—not decode which shots are synthetic. He chose documentary form deliberately, calling the result a fictionalized doc with a documentary filter.
He drew a line at fiction: real actors still generate the empathy audiences feel in scripted work. He would not today take on a historic or present-day fiction film without actors, though he believes AI can still operate “within a space of emotion and storytelling” when viewers cannot easily tell the difference.
What Happens When AI Outpaces the Edit?
Over roughly a year and a half, Carrozzini watched tools shift so fast that early sequences had to be rebuilt. By premiere week, he joked the work might already feel dated—yet that pace also kept the process exciting.
Carrozzini previously brought “Franca: Chaos and Creation” and 2022 feature “The Hanging Sun” to Venice. With “Be Brave,” he returns to the Lido betting that human-centered storytelling can survive—and even benefit from—rapidly changing AI.