King of cashmere Brunello Cucinelli on his new biographical docu-drama: ‘This is my testimony’

It takes a courageous man to commission an Oscar-winning director and composer to produce a story of his life, give them free rein on the project, and then throw a glittering world premiere in front of the Hollywood A-list and global fashion press.

But then, if there is one takeaway from Brunello Cucinelli’s toe-dip into tinseltown, it’s that he has never shied away from doing something when he wants to.

Slated to be released on December 9, 2025, ‘Brunello: the Gracious Visionary’ is a celebration of the tenacity that propelled the fashion designer from a hardworking homestead in the Italian countryside in the 1950s to the custodian of a £5.5 billion dollar brand in 2025 and known as ‘the king of cashmere’.

‘Brunello: the Gracious Visionary’ premieres in Rome

Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, of ‘Cinema Paradiso’ fame, with music by Academy Award winner Nicola Piovani, it was presented at the world-famous film studios Cinecittà – where Hollywood classics including Cleopatra, La Dolce Vita and Amarcord were filmed – and marked the opening of the new Teatro 22, one of the two largest film studios in Europe. The film took two years to film and one year to edit down to the final cut and it was, says Cucinelli, a cathartic experience.

‘It was very moving,’ says Cucinelli, who collected his Outstanding Achievement Award from Sharon Stone at the Fashion Awards at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Monday. ‘This touches the deepest most intimate corners of my soul.’

Coined a docu-drama, the film sees archive footage and modern-day interviews with family members, colleagues and several famous faces (including Oprah Winfrey) cut with dramatic scenes re-enacting several important chapters of Cucinelli’s life to tell his tale.

Three actors were personally cast by Cucinelli to play himself as a child, an adolescent and a young man, charting his formative years from his rural childhood to the bar-frequenting, scopa-playing, motorcycle riding, happy-go-lucky young man who escaped the grip of a full-time job until he was in his mid-twenties.

Rather than risk having a film made about him posthumously, Cucinelli said that he commissioned the film now so that ‘people can have my take on things’.

‘I’ve watched many documentaries in the past and many of them were shot after these people had passed away. I didn’t appreciate many of them, not because they weren’t good to look at, but because they did not ring true,’ he explains. ‘I want my children and grandchildren to hear my true voice in the movie. This is the kind of legacy I can leave to future generations – my testimony.’

Through several interviews with the man himself, it also provided Cucinelli with the opportunity to present his manifesto for ‘humanistic capitalism’. It’s an approach that, among many other altruistic projects over the years, has seen him transform his beloved village of Solomeo from a run-down hamlet in the Umbrian countryside to the beating heartbeat of his billion-dollar business that preserves artisanal techniques and a thriving community.

As he says, the overriding message of the film is that ‘you can do business whilst respecting human dignity. And you can work with better conditions without the need to humiliate or belittle people. That’s the gist of it.’

‘Brunello: the Gracious Visionary’ is released in Italian cinemas on December 9, with an international release to follow.