Gabriele Salvatores

Gabriele Salvatores was born in Naples on 30 July 1950 and moved to Milan at a very young age.
In 1972 he was among the founders of the Teatro dell’Elfo, with which he created and directed several films, including the adaptation into a musical version of the Shakespearean comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream which, in 1983, transposed for the cinema.A Summer Night’s Dream, his debut behind the camera, was presented at the Venice Film Festival. In 1986 he founded the film, television, music and editorial production company Colorado Film with Diego Abatantuono and Maurizio Totti. With Marrakech Express (1989) he inaugurated what would later be defined as the “escape trilogy”, continued with Turne (1990) and Puerto Escondido (1992). In 1991 he directed Mediterranean, the story of a group of soldiers who, during the Second World War, land on a remote Greek island and lose contact with the central command. The following year Mediterraneo won the Oscar for best foreign film, three David di Donatello and the Nastro d’argento for best director. After South (1993), Salvatores works on a sci-fi film project: it is Nirvana (1997), in which the protagonist of a video game becomes aware of his nature and communicates with the programmer who created it. Two films of narrative and stylistic experimentation follow, Denti (2000, based on the novel by Domenico Starnone) and Amnèsia (2001). In 2003 he brought Niccolò Ammaniti’s novel I’m Not Scared to the cinema, receiving a new Oscar nomination, three Nastri d’argento and a David di Donatello, then Grazia Varesani’s noir Quo vadis, baby? (2005) and again a book by Ammaniti, How God Commands (2008), shot in Friuli Venezia Giulia. After the metafictional comedy Happy Family (2010), Salvatores directs Siberian Education (2013), based on the novel by Nicolai Lilin. Between September and December 2013 he was busy in Trieste on the set of his new feature film, the “adolescent fantasy”The invisible boy.