Marco Simon Puccioni

Biography

Seventh of eight children, Puccioni was born in and grew up in Rome. After graduating in architecture at the Sapienza University of Rome, he won a Fulbright scholarship that allowed him to study at CalArts in Los Angeles where he received MFA in Film and Video in 1991.

Career

He started his professional career working for Rai Television, directing short docudramas. After directing a series of short films for the festival circuit he produced the film project Intolerance, a collective film against racism made up of shorts. He directed one of the shorts, while the others were directed by several other young Italian filmmakers such as Gabriele Muccino and Paolo Virzì, but also by veteran director Citto Maselli.

Puccioni made his full feature directorial debut in 2001 with Quello che Cerchi ("What you are looking for"). Using several digital formats, it is a road movie telling the story of a detective and a runaway teenager. The film, released in Italy in 2002, was awarded in the festival circuit and was greeted by Nanni Moretti as one of the best film debut of the year.

Between 2003 and 2006, he went back working for television and directed several documentaries and short films. Among those the short Corpo Immagine with the actress Piera Degli Esposti and the still unknown and young Nicolas Vaporidis was presented at the 61st Venice Film Festival.

In 2007, his second feature film Riparo (distributed as Shelter Me in the US and as Shelter in other countries) premiered at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival. Riparo was screened at the New Directors/New Films series among the over 90 festivals around the world. The film starred the international actress Maria de Medeiros and tells the story of a lesbian couple and an Arab teenager who illegally immigrated to Italy. Il Colore delle Parole ("The Color of Words") is a feature documentary that premiered at 66th Venice Film Festival about the roots and the multiple identities of the African community in Italy.

In 2012, he directed the documentary "Prima di tutto" ("Before anything else") part of a larger project entitled "My journey to meet you" about the life of same-sex families.

His most recent work is the feature film Come il vento ("Like the wind") presented at the 8th Rome International film festival. The film, starring Valeria Golino, Filippo Timi, Francesco Scianna, Chiara Caselli, Marcello Mazzarella narrates the story of Armida Miserere, the first woman to direct a high security jail in Italy.

Filmography

Features

Shorts