Matteo Troncone’s life came undone over the course of a few weeks back in 2006. The Mill Valley actor was in the running for a part in “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” only to be cut at the last minute. Then he had a falling out with family, and was almost killed by a Muni bus on Haight Street. “The big kicker,” he said, “was when I got an email from my girlfriend saying she had a new lover.” Distraught, Mr. Troncone began a course of self-reinvention. He purchased a 1985 Volkswagen Westfalia to live in (dubbed the “Brown Bison”) and flew to Italy after a friend hooked him up with a free plane ticket. (He’s 100 percent Italian; his mother’s side is from Venice and his father’s half is from Naples.) While wandering the streets of Naples in the spring of 2009, he was struck by the city’s take on a culinary classic. “I had the pizza and it was incredible,” he said. “It gave me an epiphany, and I had to make a film about this. But then I realized I never made a film before.” Seven years, nine trips to Italy and 125 hours of footage later, Mr. Troncone released his first feature: “Arrangiarsi (Pizza… and the Art of Living).” The film, which came out last February, caught the attention of Double 8 Dairy and Osteria Stellina, which are co-sponsoring a screening at the Dance Palace at 6 p.m. on Saturday. What started out as a film focused on the unique flavor of Naples pizza (“It’s all about the pasta dough–how did they make something that is so puffy, moist and tender?” he said) turned into a hero’s journey of sorts that intimately follows a Marin man learning the art of “arrangiarsi,” the Italian for “make do.” “Pizza is the device and metaphor of ‘arrangiarsi’,” he said. “I lived the film. I lived in my van for five years and in a tent in Naples. Arrangiarsi is the spine, how the character arranges his inner life.” Mr. Troncone edited the film as narrative nonfiction, not a documentary, and he plays a characterized version of himself. Though he worked as a professional stage actor for years and earned a master’s degree from San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre, Mr. Troncone said the fact that he never went to film school was ultimately beneficial. “Sometimes the greatest strength is not knowing what you’re doing, because when you do know, you might have an agenda for how things are supposed to be,” he said. “And when you don’t, you’re led where serendipity is waiting.” The film was accepted into the Mill Valley Film Festival last fall and will show at the American Documentary Film Festival this spring. He said he’s perfectly pleased to be showing it in West Marin next weekend. “Every time I’m out there, people come up to me and are friendly,” he said. “It reminds me of old California and the openness of community.”