Gianfranco Rosi

 ( 1963 Births ) 

His first feature film, Below Sea Level (2008), was shot over the course of four years among the residents of the unincorporated community of Slab City, California. It won the Best Documentary Award in the Orizzonti section of the 65th Venice International Film Festival. Having befriended author Charles Bowden during the production of Below Sea Level, Rosi was offered to make a film from his 2009 Harper's Magazine article The Sicario and directed El Sicario, Room 164 (2010), a face-to-face conversation with a Juárez Cartel Sicarios claiming over 200 killings. Once again, it premiered in competition in the Orizzonti sidebar at the 67th Venice International Film Festival.

Rosi then made his first Italian feature, Sacro GRA (2013), for which he lived for almost three years in a trailer near the Grande Raccordo Anulare, a circular ring road motorway encompassing the center of Rome, documenting the stories of people around it. The film was the first documentary film to ever be entered in the main competition of the Venice Film Festival, and ended up winning the Golden Lion at the 70th Venice International Film Festival, its highest award, becoming both the first documentary in Venice's history and the first Italian film in 15 years to receive the award. The unexpected win raised Rosi's profile considerably, although inside Italy he had to contend with some prominent voices opposing the idea of awarding a non-fiction work with the Golden Lion, such as journalist Curzio Maltese and filmmaker Pupi Avati.

Following his Venice win, the Istituto Luce approached Rosi to direct a short film about the 2013 migrant shipwreck at the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa, but him soon scrapped the project for a full-length documentary on Italy's societal response of the ongoing 2015 European migrant crisis. The project eventually became Fire at Sea (2016), filmed for almost a year in Lampedusa, focusing on the crisis as seen through the people of the island, such as 12-years old Samuele and migrants' doctor Pietro Bartolo. It was entered in the main competition of the 66th Berlin International Film Festival, winning once again a festival's highest award, this time the Golden Bear, and receiving widespread international critical acclaim upon its release. The film was the first documentary submitted by Italy for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film category, although it didn't make the final shortlist, it was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy Awards. It also won the European Film Award for Best Documentary.

Following the motifs of the 2015 European migrant crisis, he shot his Notturno (2020) over the course of three years, following closely the population who lived in war zones, between the middle eastern countries of Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan and Lebanon. The film marked Rosi's return to the main competition of the 77th Venice International Film Festival and was selected once again as Italy's submission for the Academy Awards, without making the final shortlist.

In 2022, Rosi directed his first archival footage documentary feature film, (2022), following the 37 international visits in 53 countries of Pope Francis. The film premiered out of competition at the 79th Venice International Film Festival, to critical acclaim.