Mike, an emotionally shut-down Italian-American banker, has one week to save his late grandmother's house, but between a Nonna he keeps alive in his mind rather than say goodbye to, an old friend dragging him into reckless Italian nightlife, and an old flame he's too guarded to let in, the deadline slips past him. He loses the house. What he finds instead is the life, and the heart, he's spent years running from.
Genre
Romantic Comedy
Setting
Los Angeles & Piemonte, Italy
Tone
Warm, funny, quietly devastating
Overview
The Story
Mike, an Italian-American banker in LA, deflects everything real with charm and jokes, until the same week he's denied a promotion, his girlfriend leaves him (“I hope you learn to feel things before it's too late”), and his stepmother reveals he has one week to save his late grandmother's house from seizure. Mike goes to Italy.
At the house, he finds Nonna: warm, present, exactly as he remembers her. It isn't real, and Mike knows it, but he can't let her go. He reconnects with Riccardo, a fellow avoider hiding his own grief, and falls back into an easy rhythm with his childhood pen pal Sara, until she pushes him to actually show up for her, not deflect, and he starts to believe he could be different.
“His heart was never too big for this world. He'd just been making himself small enough to fit in it.”
Why This Story
Why This Story. Why Now.
A Genre Gap Worth Filling
Every Italy rom-com sells the postcard: an outsider healed by the scenery. This one sells the cost of it: what it actually means to have one foot in each world, told by an Italian-American who lived it.
A Real Conversation About Masculinity
Like most men, Mike and Riccardo were never taught what to do with pain; this film watches them find another path to avoidance, and back. Timely, but earned through comedy and heart, not a lecture.
The People
Characters
Protagonist
Mike (Michele) Giusti
Early 20s. An Italian-American junior bank employee in LA who has built his entire personality around not feeling things. Big-hearted, and about to learn to let it show.
The One Who Sees Him
Sara Mancuso
Early 20s. Mike's Italian childhood pen pal, back in Piemonte from Milan to help run her family's bank. Quietly torn between chasing her own dream and staying for a father who's running out of time.
Mike's Dark Mirror
Riccardo Costa
Early 20s. Mike's childhood best friend and a magnetic fixture of Turin nightlife, who teaches Mike his “rules” for confidence and not overthinking anything, all while avoiding his own grief exactly the way Mike is.
The One Who Never Let Him Hide
Nonna Giusti
Late 60s–70s. Mike's grandmother, who passed away six months before the story begins. Mike interacts with a half-imagined, half-remembered version of her he's built to keep her close: the one person who always told him the truth.
Tone & Positioning
In the Company Of
2013
About Time
The comedy grows naturally out of flawed, lovable characters rather than punchlines; the laughs make the emotional moments land harder.
Sony Pictures Classics, 2017
Call Me By Your Name
Sun-drenched Italian cinematography and a sense of longing baked into every frame.
Netflix, 2024
La Dolce Villa
A reluctant trip to Italy becomes the place someone finally exhales, falls in love, and finds the life they didn't know they were looking for.
The Team
Cast & Creators
Leonardo Cecchi
Writer · Producer · Mike
Leonardo grew up between the US and Italy, and his own Italian grandmother passed away several years ago, and he knows firsthand both the place this film lives in and how a home can hold grief and love at once. He carried Disney's Alex & Co. for four seasons, a hit that aired across the UK, Ireland, the Middle East, and Europe.
Eleonora Gaggero
Co-Star, Sara · Attached
Eleonora's own novel, Sul più bello, became the Netflix trilogy Out of My League, in which she also starred: author-to-screen proof, and the only person to contribute as both. She and Leonardo co-led Disney's Alex & Co. for four seasons.
From the Writer
“Escape to Italy is a comedy because life keeps being funny even when it's falling apart. But underneath it is a simple, urgent idea: avoidance is the easiest way to move through life, and the most dangerous. The people we love, the moments that matter: they don't wait forever for us to be ready. This film is for anyone who has ever known exactly what they were avoiding and told themselves there was still time. I hope it's a reminder to stop waiting.”
Leonardo Cecchi, Writer · Creator · Producer
Inquiries
Escape to Italy is currently in development: script complete, casting and financing underway. For producer, financing, or distribution inquiries:
leo@stillmovingpictures.co© 2026 Leonardo Cecchi · Still Moving Pictures