Italian director Paolo Genovese, whose concept movie “Perfect Strangers” involving smartphones and personal secrets is making a global splash, is set to make his English-language debut with “The First Day of My Life,” a New York-set suicide dramedy with echoes of Frank Capra’s classic “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Based on Genovese’s novel of the same title, which has become a bestseller in Italy, “The First Day of My Life” revolves around four characters on the brink of taking their lives who make a pact with a stranger with supernatural powers. The mystery man gives them a chance to travel forward in time to see for a week how their friends and relatives would react to their deaths and what the world would be like without them.