Barbara Cupisti is an Italian award-winning documentary director with a long career as film actress. As an actress, she is well known outside of her native country by horror fans, who will most likely recognize her from her films with director

Michele Soavi Michele Soavi, sometimes known as Michael Soavi (born 3 July 1957)Baldassarre, Angela (1999) "The Great Dictators: Interviews with Filmmakers of Italian Descent", Guernica Editions, is an Italian filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter best known fo ...

and

Dario Argento Dario Argento (; born 7 September 1940) is an Italian film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and film critic, critic. His influential work in the horror film, horror genre during the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in the subgenre known as ...

. As a director, she is considered one of the most talented female directors of documentaries in the world. 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".

Career as actress

Cupisti started her career as a dancer with the Luis Falco company. She specialized in action movies and became famous in France for her role in the very popular TV "feuilleton" '' Chateauvallon''. She speaks Italian, English, French, Spanish and Esperanto.

Career as director

Since 2002 she started to direct for

Rai Cinema RAI – Radiotelevisione italiana (; commercially styled as Rai since 2000; known until 1954 as Radio Audizioni Italiane) is the national public broadcasting company of Italy, owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. RAI operates many terr ...

. Her first documentary movie ''Mothers'' (90 min), produced by the Italian RaiCinema and shown in

Venice Film Festival The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival ( it, Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival he ...

2007, won the

David di Donatello The David di Donatello Awards, named after Donatello's ''David'', a symbolic statue of the Italian Renaissance, are film awards given out each year by the ''Accademia del Cinema Italiano'' (The Academy of Italian Cinema). There are 26 award cat ...

2008 for Best Documentary of the year. It was considered a masterpiece by both the national and international press. 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 Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...

Cinema and Human Rights Award at the

Pesaro Pesaro () is a city and ''comune'' in the Italian region of Marche, capital of the Province of Pesaro e Urbino, on the Adriatic Sea. According to the 2011 census, its population was 95,011, making it the second most populous city in the Marche, ...

International Film Festival for the New Cinema (June 2009), and at the

Bobbio Bobbio ( Bobbiese: ; lij, Bêubbi; la, Bobium) is a small town and commune in the province of Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy. It is located in the Trebbia River valley southwest of the town Piacenza. There is also an abbey and a dioc ...

Film Festival of

Marco Bellocchio Marco Bellocchio (; born 9 November 1939) is an Italian film director, screenwriter, and actor. Life and career Born in Bobbio, near Piacenza, Marco Bellocchio had a strict Catholic upbringing – his father was a lawyer, his mother a schooltea ...

Unicef UNICEF (), originally called the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund in full, now officially United Nations Children's Fund, is an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing Humanitarianism, humanitarian and Devel ...

Italia gave to this movie the High Patronage. ' (I am - Stories of slavery), her third film, is about human trafficking in Italy. It was presented at the

2011 with the patronage of Amnesty International Italy and was a finalist at the

Monte-Carlo Television Festival The Monte-Carlo Television Festival is held every year in June in the Monaco, Principality of Monaco at the Grimaldi Forum, under the Honorary Presidency of H.S.H. Albert II, Prince of Monaco, Prince Albert II of Monaco. The opening ceremony ...

. Fratelli e Sorelle-storie di carcere is a two-episode documentary about the dramatic situation in Italian prisons. The film 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

2013. Interferenze Rom 2013 was shot in the Republic of Macedonia, Italy, and France and talks about the Gipsy community in Europe. Cupisti made a series of three documentaries about refugees from all over the word and the reasons for their exile, titled ''Exiles: The wars'', ''Exiles: Tibet'', and ''Exiles: The Environment''. In 2016 Exiles: The wars wins the Special Nastro d'argento of the National Syndicate of Italian Film Journalists. In 2018, ''Womanity'' is released. The film tells the story of thirty-six hours of four women in India, Egypt and the United States. It attended the Rome Film Festival and won at the Italian Film Festival in Madrid. She is currently working on the post production of the documentary ''My America''.

Filmography

Actress

Director

External links

Secret Garden Productions''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cupisti, Barbara Italian film actresses Italian television actresses Living people Accademia Nazionale di Arte Drammatica Silvio D'Amico alumni 1962 births Italian women film directors