Barbara Cupisti

Barbara Cupisti is an Italian award winning documentary director with a long career as film actress who is well known outside of her native country by Horror fans. They will most likely recognize her from her films with director Michele Soavi and Dario Argento. She specialized in action movies (she started her career as a dancer with the Luis Falco company). She became famous in France for her role in the very popular TV "feuilleton" Chateauvallon. She divided her activity between France and Italy since 1993 when she had her son from Italian actor Alberto Gimignani. She speaks Italian, English, French and Spanish.

Since 2002 she started to direct for Rai Cinema. Her first documentary movie Mothers (90 min), shown in Venice Film Festival 2007, won the David di Donatello 2008 for Best Documentary of the year.

Her second documentary, Forbidden Childhood, was screened in the festival circuit and has received the Audience Award for the Best Documentary Film at the Bahrein International Human Rights Film Festival (May 2009) and the Amnesty International Cinema and Human Rights Award at the Pesaro International Film Festival for the New Cinema (June 2009), and at the Bobbio Film Festival of Marco Bellocchio. Unicef Italia gave to this movie the High Patronage.

Io Sono, her third movie, about human trafficking in Italy, was presented at Venice Film Festival 2011 with the patronage of Amnesty International Italy and was a finalist at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival.

Fratelli e Sorelle-storie di carcere is a two-episode documentary about the dramatic situation in Italian prisons. The movie has been awarded with Premio Ilaria Alpi 2012, the most important journalist award in Italy, for the best documentary of the year and got the nomination for David di Donatello 2013.

Interferenze Rom 2013 is her last documentary has been shot between Makedonia, Italy and France and talks about the Gipsy community in Europe.

She is now working on a series of three documentaries about refugees from all over the word.

She is considered one of the most talented documentary-women-director of her generation. Her movies are always very strong pictures of contemporary society. Mostly focused on human rights.,she said that "her goal is to "give voice "to the people who don't have the opportunity to speak". Her first doc-movie "Mothers" produced by the Italian RaiCinema is considered a masterpiece from national and international press.

Filmography

Actress

Director

External links

Barbara Cupisti at the Internet Movie Database

Secret Garden Productions