Gianfranco Serraino
- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Born in Sicily. Since childhood, he has shown a definite inclination
for writing, music and later also for photography. After a diploma in
classical studies and another at the local music conservatory, he moved
to Milan where after having quit the Faculty of Engineering, he decided
to follow his artistic nature. He graduated at film school and was
immediately chosen as second second assistant director in the high
budget television series "La Piovra 6" starring Vittorio Mezzogiorno.
After that he worked in advertising where he developed a remarkable
technical ability. Finally, he decided that it was time to tackle
content rather than technique, so he left advertising to work as a
writer and follow a career as documentarian. As a Sicilian, he felt the
need to contribute to spreading a more positive and less stereotypical
image of his homeland. His first documentary "Forti i paleddi" received
the plaudits of public and critics alike and won prizes in various
national and international festivals (Toulon, Verviers). Serraino has
been defined one of the most interesting emerging documentarians on the
international scene. He continued with the production of other
documentaries, "La vara", "il velo di lava" and "Images: journey
through Sicily" experimenting with multimedia on this occasion. This
brings him to the attention of French producer Emanuel Chouraqui,
founder of Beamlight, with whom be began to collaborate. In 2000,
Serraino moved to Paris where, between 2001 and 2003, he directed two
series of documentaries: "Les metiers dans the shades" and "Profession
producteur", in which he appears as co-director ("conception and
realisation visuelle") produced in collaboration with TPS Cinema.
During his stay in Paris, he made frequent trips to London where he had
already had in the past worked with many people. Meanwhile his writing
ability improved to the point that known scriptwriter friends suggested
he devoted himself entirely to a collection of short stories entitled
TR-IO. Serraino moved back to Italy and began to write his first
screen-play "The bridge to nowhere" from an idea he had in 1998. In
between times he directed and produced another documentary, "Sicilia:
colour, tradition and passion" and had the privilege to be selected to
conceive and direct what he calls a docu-clip for His Holiness Giovanni
Paul II entitled "No More Terrorism, No more War" to inspire peace
among religions."Solo", a screen-play drawn from one of his short
stories has received a lot of interest and it has become the source of
development of a feature film script. Now Serraino is one of the very
few international Italian scriptwriters / directors. "Soul Market" and
"Water Project" (working title) are two other scripts that Serraino is
developing for the international market.