Biography

Jacopo Spanó, born in 2006 in Liguria, began making his first animated short films at a very young age using stop-motion techniques. At the age of 13, he started working as an assistant director for local productions. Between 2020 and 2023, he created several stylistic exercises through which he approached narrative filmmaking and directing. In 2024, at the age of 17, driven by his dream of cinema, he moved alone to Rome, where he completed high school. Between 2023 and 2025, collaborating with various collectives and productions, he directed four short films: L’UOMO CHE FOTOGRAFÓ LA DONNA PIÚ BELLA DEL MONDO, MERDA D’ARTISTA, L’UOMO PIÚ ODIATO DEL MONDO, and I PROBLEMATICI, ovvero: un amico e un’amica. His short films have been screened at the RIFF, Cinema Troisi, GOGA Film Fest, and Voci Fuoricampo, as well as at several film showcases throughout Italy and abroad. In 2025, he began working with various production companies and organizations, including Amazon Prime Video, Avventurosa, and Fosforo. During the same period, in Rome and elsewhere, he attended workshops, artistic residencies, and filmmaking labs. In November 2025, he won both the “Best Director” award and the “Best Short Film” award in the 42HRS category at the AS Film Festival. In February 2026, he won the “Pigneto Film Festival Award” at the Pianeta Mare Film Festival. The cinema of Jacopo Spanó is austere and deeply connected to the territory where he grew up, resulting in a dry, provincial perspective. His filmmaking draws heavily from Soviet and cinéma vérité traditions — from Sergei Eisenstein to Dziga Vertov — as well as from the French New Wave, particularly filmmakers such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. His work seeks to take simple situations and overturn them, attempting to deconstruct the canonical grammar of cinema.