Andrea Bocelli’s Documentary Director Says Her Title Landed Her the Dream Job (Unique)

The director of Andrea Bocelli‘s new documentary felt an immediate connection to the opera singer — particularly due to their shared cultural heritage.

Talking with PEOPLE on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition, Cosima Spender, the director of Andrea Bocelli: As a result of I Imagine, shares that when the producers had been trying to find somebody to helm the documentary, Bocelli expressed curiosity in having an Italian-speaking director.

“I used to be very fortunate that the producers have been advised by Andrea that they actually needed an Italian-speaking director, which is smart, as a result of if you are going to let somebody in your life, you need to have the ability to talk them within the language that you just’re most at dwelling,” Spender tells PEOPLE on Friday, Sept. 6, a day earlier than the doc’s TIFF premiere.

“I met Andrea in a resort in London. I used to be being vetted,” she says. “I feel he made his resolution fairly rapidly, as a result of I used to be born in the identical space of Tuscany that he lived in. So, I spoke with precisely the identical native accent.”

“I feel he felt at dwelling, and he advised me, ‘Oh, my physician’s known as Cosimo,’ And I can say we do share this love for the land we come from,” she provides.

Based on the movie’s description offered by TIFF, As a result of I Imagine element’s the long-lasting opera singer’s profession from his early childhood and when he started his profession in music to now, utilizing “interviews and archival efficiency footage, in addition to casual gatherings, similar to a diverting social gathering the place Bocelli’s family and friends reminisce over meals and wine.”

For Spender — whose most up-to-date work contains directing a number of Italian TV collection, brief movies and music movies — some of the necessary elements of building a relationship with Bocelli was connecting over their love for the Tuscan area.

“[He] has to journey world wide … he nonetheless desires to really feel linked to the land he comes from,” Spender says.

“Success got here to him fairly late, and earlier than that, he was very hooked up to the place he was born and grew up,” she continues. “And we share the love of that land, of the scent of the soil after the rain, and the summer season and the sounds of winters. That was a connection — an immediate connection.”

As a result of I Imagine premiered at TIFF on Saturday, Sept. 7, and the viewers obtained to see a extra intimate aspect of the tenor’s life.

One second within the movie sees Bocelli opening up about an incident from his childhood that left him blind after he was residing with glaucoma.

“As a toddler, I used to be thought-about extraordinarily short-sighted. I might see all the things however solely from up shut,” Andrea, 65, mentioned within the documentary. “I bear in mind extraordinarily properly the world I noticed. Colours, all the things. How might I neglect these recollections?”

The musician’s brother Alberto additionally spoke about his issues along with his imaginative and prescient within the movie, opening up about his tough childhood.

“My brother Andrea, aged 3½, resulting from congenital glaucoma, had been operated on 13 instances in Turin,” Alberto defined. “It was torture.”

Whereas the singer was attending a boarding faculty for “the visually impaired,” he sustained an damage enjoying soccer that left him with much more imaginative and prescient troubles.

“At some point, enjoying [soccer], I used to be the goalkeeper. No thought why, as I had by no means been the goalie earlier than,” Bocelli recalled within the film. “And I by no means can be goalie once more. A ball hit me proper within the face. From that blow, a hemorrhage … and the remainder is historical past.”

Alberto added, “That is when he misplaced. That is when darkness fell.”

In an archival interview with Bocelli’s mom proven within the movie, she defined that neither she nor her son ever thought Bocelli was only a “poor boy.”

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“Above all, Andrea by no means accepted any type of pity. He’d say, ‘What is the level of pity?’ ” his mother mentioned. “We have raised him on these ideas. With braveness. With a whole lot of braveness.”

Based on Spender, the movie is stuffed with moments like this that enable viewers to see a extra private view of Bocelli.

“On this movie, you go behind, and also you see him do rather more than simply stand there and sing,” Spender tells PEOPLE. “You get a way of who he’s as an individual. You get the ambiance of the home, which music permeates completely in on a regular basis life. He is all the time buzzing a tune. He is all the time like instantly singing.”