It is not easy to be able to imagine the daily life of the mafia. Pif, pseudonym of Pierfrancesco Diliberto, is able to tell through his dramatic comedy what was his childhood in Palermo. Here is the story of the Italian director and TV presenter and his career path.
Who is Pif
Pierfrancesco Diliberto better known as Pif (Palermo, June 4, 1972), is a television host, as well as a director, screenwriter and actor. He grew up in Sicily with a family made up of a director father and a primary school teacher mother. Already as a child he discovers his passion for cinema and so, once he has finished high school, he decides to turn his hobby into a job. In fact, he chooses not to follow the classic academic path by taking a degree, but to attend courses in “Media Practice” in London.
He began to enter the sector assisting Franco Zeffirelli in the creation of “A tea with Mussolini” in 1999 and subsequently with Marco Tullio Giordana in the creation of “The one hundred Steps”. With this film, awarded at the David di Donatello and at the Venice Film Festival, he begins to explore the theme of the mafia by telling the life of Peppino Impastato.
Who is Pif: the beginning of his career on TV
In the meantime, he was hired by Mediaset as television author and starts working on candid projects on Italia 1 and then moves on to the role of correspondent for “Hyenas”. Right here he is nicknamed Pif by his colleague Marco Berry who gives birth to an unforgettable pseudonym during a business trip. In fact, a few years later Pif becomes a well known character thanks to the program “The witness” with which he tells the typical day of some characters from the world of entertainment.
He decides to tackle the big screen by making his directorial debut and so he realizes “The mafia only kills in the summer” a film that also sees him as the protagonist of the story that tells his childhood in Palermo in relation to the criminal activity of the Cosa Nostra. Back in 2016 in the editorial office of “Le Iene”, this time as conductor together with Nadia Toffa and the same year he released his second film, “In guerra per amore”, presented at the Rome Film Festival.
Who is Pif: between films, books and private life
The following year he carries on the difficult subject of the mafia together with Fabio Fazio and Roberto Saviano in the broadcast “Palermo, Falcone and Borsellino” on Rai 1. The program is held on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Capaci massacre and the Via D’Amelio massacre performed by Cosa Nostra and has invited numerous political and show business exponents.
During his career Pif also dedicates himself to writing publishing in 2007 “Piffetopoli. The labors of a quasi-VIP ”, in 2012 he wrote a story for Caracò Editore entitled“ It must have been a gas leak ”in the book“ Where we were. Twenty years later Capaci and Via D’Amelio “and finally in 2018 he wrote a novel entitled” … that God forgives everyone “for Feltrinelli.
As for his private life instead, in 2011 he met Giulia Innocenzi, Michele Santoro’s collaborator, whom he got to know on the occasion of a procession in Palermo, and with whom he embarked on a story that lasted until 2016.