Wilma Labate was born in Rome and started her career as a television director. In the 1980s she worked in the field of documentary filmmaking. She made her feature film debut in 1992 with Ambrogio, about a woman who wants to enter the Naval Academy during the 1960s and has to fight her family, her friends, and a world not ready to accept her. Labate was nominated best new director at the 1994 Nastri d'Argento awards. In 1996, her film La mia generazione (My Generation) won the Grolla d'oro for best film and was the Italian entry for the 1997 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film – only the second by an Italian female director after Lina Wertmüller. She has directed more than fourteen visual works in which she follows her firm belief that cinema should be full of surprises, narrated with a sensual gaze. In her films she has portrayed historical moments and themes like the loss of working class identity due to the lure of consumerism, the daily struggles of women, and women’s capacity to resist at all cost.