Move over, “My Cousin Vinny” — here comes “My Cousin Billy.”
A star-struck Italian director linked to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s grandmother is filming a documentary tracing Hizzoner’s rise to the top of the Big Apple, all the way from his family’s humble roots in tiny Grassano, Italy.
Vincenzo Lerose, whose father comes from the same hometown as de Blasio’s grandmother Anna Briganti, started filming “My Cousin Is the Mayor of New York” in May.
An online trailer of “Mio Cugino e’ il Sindaco” includes holiday snapshots of a shaggy, college-age Billy visiting Grassano in 1983, and of Lerose meeting with neighbors of Briganti, who left for New York City in 1902.
In one scene, four nonnos toast Hizzoner in Italian. “Well, let’s raise the glasses and bless our mayor … and we’ll wait for him to come soon,” says one. “To Billy,” they all reply.
While centering on a host of characters who emigrate and then return to their origins, the film climaxes in this week’s blowout festa honoring de Blasio in front of thousands of cheering locals.
“For such a small place like Grassano … the visit of the Mayor of what we can easily consider the most famous city in the world is … an unusual once-in-a-lifetime spotlight that made them for a day at the center of the world — or at least that is how it feels,” Lerose wrote to The Post via email.
De Blasio’s visit, said Lerose, was “an injection of collective joy and pride, and then the more or less rational hope that this famous fella can somehow help their common land to rise.”
On the film’s website, the mayor of Grassano — who made de Blasio an honorary citizen on Thursday — dreams of running the New York Marathon and hearing Hizzoner announce his presence while he limbers up.
Silvestro, the tour guide from de Blasio and his mother Maria’s 1983 Italy jaunt, tells of how Billy struggled to fit his 6-foot-6 frame into a teeny-weeny Alfa Romeo Giulietta.
“He had some hard times trying to get into the car,” says Silvestro.
A local poet wrote a poem in honor of de Blasio, while Giovanni Spadafino, a journalist, spent months researching de Blasio’s Italian roots.
“The cooks who cooked for him really cared to make the real ‘parmigiana,’ (and I mean Melanzane [Eggplant] alla Parmigiana, because this morning one of them told me that Americans somehow also call ‘parmigiana’ a deal with chicken and stuff, but that’s just cursing to us) as his mother used to do,” wrote Lerose.
De Blasio declared eggplant parmigiana his favorite Italian meal before he jetted off, and said he would “search all of Italy” for one as good as his mother’s.
Asked how Billy’s Italian holds up, Lerose said, “I tempted to give him 9. So if it’s not 9, it’s an 8 for sure, but I’m kind of feeling like a mean teacher with a 8.”
The mayor’s office has yet to respond to The Post’s request for comment, and Lerose is unaware if de Blasio and his family know about the film.
A T-shirt of the film and a letter explaining it were included in the official gifts given by Grassano’s mayor.
Lerose plans to come to New York in the fall to continue shooting his documentary and hopes to interview the mayor. The 52-minute film is due to be finished by December.