Biography

Domenico Distilo (born 25 December 1978 in Rome, Lazio, Italy) is a filmmaker living and working between Rome, Italy and Berlin, Germany.

He graduated in film direction from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome with the film Unexpected (Inatteso), a documentary on the demand for political asylum in Italy, which was screened at the Festival dei Popoli in Florence and at the Berlinale, within the section "Forum" in 2006.

In 2008, he won the national prize Premio Solinas for the screenplay of the feature film When elephants fight (Quando gli elefanti combattono), written in collaboration with Filippo Gravino and Guido Iuculano.

In 2009, he joined the production company Sciara, where he works as director and producer.

In 2011, he directed two documentaries for RAI 3, the Italian cultural public channel: Urban extremes - Jerusalem (Estremi urbani, Gerusalemme), on the territorial conflict in Jerusalem and Romany imaginary - Minority artists (Immaginario Rom - Artisti Contro), on Romany art in Hungary.

Distilo's works generally focus on social issues, with a special interest in various forms of contemporary art.

In his movie Deep time (Margini di sottosuolo) (2011), he explored the boundaries between documentary and fiction with a story on archeology and the feelings that bound people to their past.

In 2018 his documentary Manga Do, Igort and the way of the manga won the audience award at the Biografilm Festival in Bologna. The film tells the journey of Igort, one of the most important Italian graphic novel authors, in the founding places of Japanese culture. The film follows a previous reportage, Igort, the secret landscape (2013), which tells the story of Igort's search for the creation of his trilogy on the Soviet Union.