Federico Fellini invites Sonia Schoonejans, a young Belgian choreographer, to follow him during the various stages of producing his film La Cittá delle donne and to keep a journal.
The result is this book — published for the first time in French — which presents a lively and moving testimony of the Master's life and work, and of how the actors and scenes were prepared for shootings. Marcello Mastroianni, Nino Rota (who died before the rushes began), and producers Renzo Rossellini and Daniel Toscan du Plantier are but a few of the figures readers will encounter in this work. Here they will also find Balthus and Francis Ponge and other film-makers — Akerman, Leone, Scorsese — attempting to shed light on some part of the Fellini mystery, after meeting him.
On these pages, we accompany Fellini in his daily routine, from his breakfast to his favourite trattoria in the evening. We accompany him as he deals with an interruption of the film-shoot, or a demonstration by feminists. Sonia Schoonejans makes it possible for us to envision the magic as it happens and perceive the film-maker's genius as he gradually transforms his previously concealed screenplay into a masterpiece.

Sonia Schoonejans has led a multifaceted career as a dancer, writer, lecturer and exhibition organiser. Since 2001, she has been teaching the history of dance at the Centre de formation à l'enseignement de la danse et de la musique in Nantes. For Arte, she produced the series Un siècle de danse, which won First Prize in the Video Dance competition. She just published Le Geste de Lacan at Que and is the director of Complexe's collection "Territoires de la danse."