Mr. Rossi, 35, who is the film’s director and cinematographer, had the foresight of perfect timing when he started shooting in November 2004, having read that Mr. Maccioni at the end of that year planned to shutter the Palace Hotel incarnation of the restaurant, Le Cirque 2000, and start anew in a different location.

But it soon becomes clear that the charismatic Mr. Maccioni had no well-considered plan. As the camera zooms in, Henry A. Kissinger, a restaurant regular, is seen advising Mr. Maccioni sotto voce over whether to move to Central Park South or to the Bloomberg building. (Bloomberg, on Lexington Avenue and 58th Street, won out.)

Nor is the food exactly the driving force as the new restaurant takes shape, even though the quest for a favorable three-star review from The Times is. Four months before the opening, the family still hasn’t decided what exactly the new menu will be. Simple Italian fare like melon and prosciutto, the desire of the elder Mr. Maccioni? Or complicated tasting “trios,” as Pierre Schaedelin, then the executive chef, was suggesting and one son wanted? Later, when Cardinal Edward M. Egan comes to bless the new restaurant, at Mr. Maccioni’s request, he spreads his holy water at the entrance until, as an addendum, Mr. Maccioni asks, “One thing, actually, can we do the kitchen for a second?”

To Mr. Rossi, “it’s a documentary filmmaker’s dream when you walk into the room and turn your camera on and this person just explodes through your lens, and all I need to do is be here to see what this guy does.”

A former corporate lawyer, Mr. Rossi got into the filmmaking business when he did some informal legal work for the 2001 documentary “Startup.com.” Self-taught in film, he quit his law job after two years to make “Eat This New York,” a 2002 film which he directed with Kate Novack, who is now his wife.