This article is about the 1997 Italian film. For other uses, see Life Is Beautiful (disambiguation).
"La vita è bella" redirects here. For other uses, see La vita è bella (disambiguation).
Life Is Beautiful (Italian: La vita è bella, Italian pronunciation: [la ˈviːta ˈɛ ˈbɛlla]) is a 1997 Italian comedy-drama film directed by and starring Roberto Benigni, who co-wrote the film with Vincenzo Cerami. Benigni plays Guido Orefice, a Jewish Italian bookshop owner, who employs his fertile imagination to shield his son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi concentration camp. The film was partially inspired by the book In the End, I Beat Hitler by Rubino Romeo Salmonì and by Benigni's father, who spent two years in a German labour camp during World War II.