Paolo Bianchini is an Italian film director born in Rome. He began as an assistant director to such major Italian film directors as Luigi Zampa, Mario Monicelli, Luigi Comencini, Vittorio De Sica, Mauro Bolognini and Sergio Leone. He then moved into commercial film making and advertising, working for large international companies, until 1997, when he returned to the cinema with La grande quercia, which won a prize at the Berlin Festival, the Napa Valley Festival (California), Chicago Film Festival and the International Youth Film Festival in Laon (France).
In 2002 he directed L’uomo del vento sponsored by UNICEF, in 2004 Posso chiamarti amore?, and in 2005 Il bambino sull’acqua. With Paola Rota, he founded Alveare Cinema, a production company responsible for films such as Il giorno, la notte and Il sole dentro, many sponsored by UNICEF. Also worthy of mention are the films L’addio a Enrico Berlinguer (1984), a collective documentary, Vite a perdere (2003), Codice Aurora (2007) and Mal’aria (2009). In 2002 he was named a UNICEF Ambassador for his work on childhood problems, a subject he has dealt with in many of his films. Working with his son, he is currently making films in Italian prisons for an Italian public television web series about the reintegration of young people.
LiberPress Cinema Award 2017
Paolo Bianchini received the 2017 LiberPress Cinema Award for his extraordinary cinematographic career devoted largely to social and committed cinema; for his defence and view of the world of childhood and adolescence through films; for having shown with great beauty and tenderness the marginalised, the underprivileged, the vulnerable, and those beings who are victims of any type of power; for his mastery, coherence and independence, and for the aestheticism, beauty and hard-hitting nature (only when necessary) of his admirable and highly acclaimed work.