Guglielmo Papaleo: Last News

Guy Lodge Film Critic An Emmy-nominated documentary cinematographer with credits including “Procession” and “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” Robert Kolodny puts his expert eye for shooting nonfiction to playful narrative use in his feature directing debut “The Featherweight.” A meticulously designed, gutsily played biopic of world champion featherweight boxer Guglielmo Papaleo, better known as Willie Pep — covering not his 1940s glory days but his faltering attempt at a comeback two decades later — the film is convincingly fashioned as a candid all-access documentary, a promotional puff piece curdling before our eyes into an unintended study of mental breakdown. So convincingly, in fact, that uninformed viewers chancing upon “The Featherweight” on the festival circuit may wonder exactly what it is they’re watching, not least if — in a realization of Pep’s own glumly stated fears — they have no idea who this once-celebrated sportsman was.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefLeonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions has teamed with Singapore’s Golden Ratio Films and Canada’s Blisspoint Entertainment to shoot “Pep,” a biopic of legendary mid-20th century featherweight boxer Willie Pep.The film is poised to begin production in Hartford, Connecticut, Pep’s home-state, with Robert Kolodny directing from a screenplay by Steve Loff.Pep, born Guglielmo Papaleo, had an extraordinarily long career spanning 26 years and nearly 2,000 rounds as a professional.