50 free Federico Fellini trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Federico Fellini trivia quiz covers the whole arc of the director's life, from the boy in Rimini drawing cartoons and staging puppet shows to the maestro whose funeral at Cinecittà drew an estimated 70,000 mourners. The easy questions are the ones every film fan should get: which country he came from, the film that gave the world the word paparazzi, the strongman and the waif of La Strada, and the actress he was married to for fifty years. From there it digs into the details that make his career so strange and rich: the humour magazine that launched him, the Rossellini script that earned his first Oscar nomination, the title he almost gave 8½, the psychoanalyst who introduced him to Jung, the day he toured Disneyland with Walt Disney, the Romagnol word behind Amarcord, and the espresso technique baristas still call the Fellini move. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on Fellini, his major films and his closest collaborators before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Italy, Oscars and classic movies quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Italian seaside town was Federico Fellini born in 1920?
Rimini
Rimini's airport is now named after him, and the Fellini Museum opened there in 2021.
Q 02How many competitive Academy Awards did Fellini's films win over his career?
Four
Those four wins remain a record for the category, on top of an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement in 1993.
Q 03Which English word derives from Paparazzo, a news photographer character in La Dolce Vita?
Paparazzi
Walter Santesso played the photographer friend of journalist Marcello Rubini; the term is now used in many languages.
Q 04Which actress, Fellini's wife of fifty years, played Gelsomina in La Strada?
Giulietta Masina
Charlie Chaplin, whose work hers is often compared with, called her the actress who moved him most.
Q 05Which American actor played the brutish strongman Zampanò in La Strada?
Anthony Quinn
Zampanò's act consists of breaking an iron chain bound across his chest, then passing a hat.
Q 06Which composer wrote the scores for Fellini's films, including the circus marches of 8½?
Nino Rota
Rota also scored the first two Godfather films, winning an Oscar for The Godfather Part II.
Q 07Which actor starred as tabloid journalist Rubini in La Dolce Vita and as the director Guido in 8½?
Marcello Mastroianni
Producer Dino De Laurentiis had wanted Paul Newman for La Dolce Vita; Fellini insisted on the then little-known Mastroianni.
Q 08Which famous Rome landmark do Marcello and Sylvia wade into in La Dolce Vita?
The Trevi Fountain
Earlier that evening they dance in the Baths of Caracalla before slipping away from her bored fiancé.
Q 09Which Swedish-born actress played the film star Sylvia in La Dolce Vita?
Anita Ekberg
Photos of Ekberg after a night in a Rome club, taken by Pierluigi Praturlon, were one of the film's inspirations.
Q 10What does the title Amarcord mean in Fellini's native Romagnol dialect?
I remember
Fellini liked that the word also seemed to hold amare, cuore, ricordare and amaro at once; it became an Italian neologism for nostalgic evocation.
Q 11Where did Fellini's 8½ rank on the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll of the greatest films?
10th
Directors polled the same year placed it even higher, at fourth.
Q 12Which prize did La Dolce Vita win at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival?
The Palme d'Or
Presiding juror Georges Simenon handed over the award and was promptly hissed at by the disapproving festival crowd.
Q 13Fellini's La Strada won the first-ever Academy Award in which category?
Best Foreign Language Film
Nights of Cabiria won the same award the following year, making Fellini and Italy back-to-back winners.
Q 21Fellini's first solo-directed feature, The White Sheik, starred which comic actor in the title role?
Alberto Sordi
The story was reworked from a treatment first written by Michelangelo Antonioni about Italy's photographed comic-strip romances.
Q 22Which 1953 film about small-town layabouts won Fellini the Silver Lion at Venice?
I Vitelloni
Stanley Kubrick named it his favourite film of all time in a 1963 magazine list, and it influenced Mean Streets and American Graffiti.
Q 23Which director ranked Fellini's 1953 film about provincial layabouts as his favourite film?
Stanley Kubrick
Q 14Fellini's Nights of Cabiria was adapted into which Broadway musical, later filmed by Bob Fosse?
Sweet Charity
Fosse's 1969 film version starred Shirley MacLaine in the role Giulietta Masina had created.
Q 15Fellini's 8½ inspired which 1982 Broadway musical by Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit?
Nine
The same film also inspired All That Jazz, Stardust Memories and Day for Night.
Q 16Which neorealist director invited the young Fellini to contribute gags and dialogue to Rome, Open City?
Roberto Rossellini
Rossellini met Fellini in the Funny Face Shop, where he was drawing caricatures of American soldiers.
Q 17Fellini's second Oscar nomination for a screenplay, in 1950, was for which Rossellini film?
Paisà
He had also served as assistant director on the film, shooting the Sicilian scenes at Maiori.
Q 18Which humour magazine employed Fellini from 1939 to 1942, called 'the determining moment in Fellini's life'?
Marc'Aurelio
Its editorial board also included future director Ettore Scola and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini.
Q 19Fellini met his future wife in 1942 while she was voicing which character in his radio serial?
Pallina
The serial was Cico and Pallina; they married on 30 October 1943 after nine months of dating.
Q 20Which 1950 backstage comedy, co-directed with Alberto Lattuada, was Fellini's first feature film?
Variety Lights
It flopped so badly that the production company went bankrupt, leaving both directors in debt for over a decade.
The film also inspired Barry Levinson's Diner and Joel Schumacher's St. Elmo's Fire.
Q 24Which American actor did Fellini cast as the aging swindler in Il Bidone after seeing an All the King's Men poster?
Broderick Crawford
His first choice had been Humphrey Bogart, ruled out by the actor's lung cancer; the shoot was then dogged by Crawford's drinking.
Q 25Which poet and future director translated Nights of Cabiria's dialogue into Roman dialect?
Pier Paolo Pasolini
The film also drew on stories told by Wanda, a shantytown prostitute Fellini met on the set of Il Bidone.
Q 26Which producer wanted Paul Newman for La Dolce Vita and sold the rights when Fellini chose Mastroianni?
Dino De Laurentiis
The rights went to publishing mogul Angelo Rizzoli, who later set up the short-lived company Federiz for Fellini.
Q 27In which year did Fellini witness the real Christ-statue helicopter flight that opens La Dolce Vita?
1956
The film's closing sea creature likewise came from a giant fish marooned on a Rimini beach during a 1934 storm.
Q 28Which co-screenwriter created Steiner, the intellectual in La Dolce Vita who kills his children and himself?
Tullio Pinelli
Pinelli had gone to school with the novelist Cesare Pavese, whose 1950 suicide shaped the character.
Q 29Which title did Ennio Flaiano suggest for the film that eventually became 8½?
La bella confusione
Fellini settled on 8½ under producer pressure, a self-referential nod to the number of films he had directed so far.
Q 30What is the profession of Guido Anselmi, the blocked protagonist of 8½?
Film director
Fellini only settled it after nearly abandoning the project; he decided to film a director who no longer knew what film he wanted to make.