ONCE UPON A TIME IN…

Varese, Italy, November 27, 1981, 8 a.m.

Blonde hair, blue eyes, and a face that screamed not from around here. German tourists nodded approvingly until my hair darkened, and my Italian roots betrayed me.

My mother remembers a curious, smiling baby who could stare at the same toy for hours—or nap like a champ.

HEAR NO EVIL, SEE NO EVIL.

By six, I was rocking hearing aids and scrambling to make sense of a world that suddenly buzzed and clicked. Sound was overrated anyway; my eyes told better stories.

Books, comics, films—they became my lifeline. My dad read me Hans Christian Andersen’s  The Steadfast Tin Soldier, and I made him read it again. And again. And again.

GETTING PERSONAL.

The ’80s weren’t just neon and bad hair—they brought personal computers. My dad brought home a Commodore Plus/4, and I learned to load games like my life depended on it.

LOAD "*",8,1 was going to initiate a new experience. Arkanoid was my religion, though the loading times could’ve made a saint swear.

When we upgraded to a Pentium, I opened it up with a screwdriver before I even turned it on. That curiosity turned into a job at K-Computers in my twenties, where I built PCs for a paycheck and took them apart for fun.

IT’S THE ART, STUPID.

Cinema hooked me early. My dad dragged me to parish halls with wooden chairs and white walls pretending to be screens. Those flickering images changed everything. By high school, I was writing stories, drawing comic strips, and designing covers for the school magazine.

At 17, I joined a theater company. Medieval comedies, slapstick, and Italian farce—it didn’t matter, as long as I could make people laugh. I spent the next decade performing across Italy, learning how to tell stories on stage.

CAPUT MUNDI.

At 25, my parents gave me a video camera. That little device was a revelation. My first film was 58 seconds long, experimental, and somehow won me a trophy.

Living in a garage on the outskirts of Rome, I joined another theater troupe, acted in plays, and wrote Le Chat Noir, a cabaret show that got a nod from critic Nicola Fano.

Rome was chaos and beauty rolled into one. I started shooting casting videos for friends, but blank backdrops weren’t my thing. I turned auditions into short films.

That caught a producer’s eye, and suddenly I was on a film set. I pitched a short—a comedy-detective hybrid—and somehow roped in Mario Monicelli for a cameo.

THE AMERICAN DREAM.

In 2008, I won a scholarship to the New York Film Academy. I landed in New York with no English, no place to stay, and no clue what I was doing. Film school became my second home. In one year, I worked on nearly 50 projects, crisscrossing the country and shooting with filmmakers from every corner of the world.

Since then, my camera’s taken me everywhere—Alaska, the Maldives, Japan. You name it, I’ve been.

In 2016, I shot Cloud Kumo, which won the Student Academy Silver Prize and the Golden Eagle Award. Visiting the ASC Clubhouse and meeting legends like Dean Cundey, Richard Crudo and Michael Goi felt like walking into a dream.

BRAVE NEW WORLD.

In 2018, I married Courtney, the woman who keeps my world in focus. We moved back to Italy for a while, where I worked on TV shows and commercials.

Then, in early 2020, we returned to the U.S., just in time for the world to stop spinning.

REAL AS A DREAM.

Supported by the mentorship of Michael Slovis, ASC and Richard Crudo, ASC, my love for storytelling only grew stronger.

My work’s been to Venice, Sundance, Cannes. I’ve shot in frozen tundras, scorching deserts, and places that don’t exist on maps. I’ve survived 21-hour shoots, actors with egos the size of skyscrapers, and producers who thought “budget” was a dirty word.

January 2025. Sixteen years after stepping onto U.S. soil with nothing but a suitcase and a dream, I became a citizen.

It’s been a journey—messy, beautiful, and everything in between.