Anna Margherita Cataldi (14 November 1939 – 1 September 2021) was an Italian humanitarian, journalist, film producer, and author of several books.
She is known for having been executive producer for the Academy Award-winning Out of Africa,
Early life and education
Cataldi was born in
Turin. She attended the
Liceo Artistico di Torino and then the Polytechnic University of Turin, where she studied in the
Faculty of Architecture.
Out of Africa
Starting in 1981, Anna Cataldi travelled to
Denmark and
Kenya to research the life of the writer
Karen Blixen. This process lasted three years, at the end of which she wrote an original treatment for a movie based on Blixen's memoir
Out of Africa, published using the pen name
Isak Dinesen. In 1984, Columbia Pictures purchased the treatment from Cataldi and in 1985 she was associate producer
for the
Academy Awards-winning film Out of Africa, directed by
Sydney Pollack and starring
Meryl Streep and
Robert Redford.
Humanitarian work
Somalia
In September 1992, Anna Cataldi went on her first humanitarian mission with her good friend, actress and
UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador
Audrey Hepburn. Together they travelled to
Somalia, which was suffering from a major drought. Cataldi's first of many humanitarian missions was Hepburn's last, as she died early the following year.
Sarajevo
After returning from
Somalia, Cataldi obtained a job at Italian magazine
Panorama as a war correspondent from
Sarajevo, which was under siege at the time. After reporting on the events in 1992, she was appointed
UNICEF International Media Consultant, a position she held between 1993 and 1994, during which she travelled to
Sarajevo several times.
Messenger of Peace
In 1998, newly appointed United Nations Secretary-General
Kofi Annan made Cataldi one of the ten original United Nations Messengers of Peace. Annan presented the newly appointed Messengers of Peace by saying, "they are individuals who possess widely recognized talents in the field of arts, literature, music and sports, who have agreed to help focus worldwide attention on the work of the United Nations".
In this ambassadorial role she travelled on missions to
Rwanda,
Burundi,
Kenya,
Sudan,
Zambia,
Afghanistan and
Angola. Cataldi resigned from the post in 2006 after Kofi Annan left his position as secretary-general.
World Health Organization
In 2007 Cataldi became Goodwill Ambassador for the World Health Organization in the Stop TB programme.
To raise awareness on the plight of
tuberculosis, Cataldi travelled to
Afghanistan,
Pakistan,
Angola,
Zambia, South Africa,
Algeria,
Morocco and
Jordan during her time as ambassador. She left the World Health Organization and the United Nations in 2011.
ECRE
After leaving the United Nations, Cataldi was nominated Goodwill Ambassador for the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, known as ECRE. In her two-year stay she travelled to
Hungary,
Malta,
Tunisia and
Libya. During this period of time and following 2012, when she left ECRE, Cataldi became increasingly involved with issue regarding refugees, as well as the fate of the countries recovering from the
Arab Spring. She in fact travelled to Tunisia in 2015 to report on the political situation for the Italian magazine
F. There, she interviewed several prominent women, some of whom were part of the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, which later won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Crimes of War Project
Cataldi was also one of the founders of the
Crimes of War Project, together with five others including previous chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay
Morris Davis. For more than ten years Cataldi was involved in promoting the project and she was still a member of the board of directors,
which is "dedicated to raising public awareness of the laws of war and their application to situations of armed conflict".
Publications
Periodicals and newspapers
Anna Cataldi contributed to the following newspapers and magazines during her journalistic career: El País, Panorama,
Epoca,
La Repubblica,
L'Espresso,
La Stampa, La Règle du Jeu,
The Nation,
Rolling Stone, The International Herald Tribune, Front Line, and
UN Chronicle.
