La famiglia represents a long standing project for Ettore Scoia - it is his only feature in almost three years since the completion of Maccheroni. By all accounts. La famiglia promises to be a monumental effort, covering the eighty year history of a bourgeois family, from 1906 to the present.

Since the seventies Scola has been one of Italy's most widely discussed directors. He has successfully adapted the formula of the commedia italiana style through a wide range of subjects, with some sombre undertones. With La famiglia one can expect an amusing desecration of that still dominant institution, the family, as it is cross-sectioned generation after generation, and good use of Scola's most noteworthy skills: his ability for sustained comic and dramatic writing (Scola was a prolific screenwriter before he began to direct), and his ability at recreating a particular socio-historical milieu. Also of note is that La famiglia will once again bring together some of Scola's long time associates - in particular, screenwriters Ruggero Maccari and Furio Scarpelli, and two of Scola's veteran actors, Vittorio Gassman and Stefania Sandrelli.