DIRECTOR & EDITOR
DOCUMENTARIES
COMMERCIALS
FICTION
About
Niccolò Donatini (born June 30, 1998) is an Italian film director and editor. He graduated with honors in March 2023 in Cinema and New Technologies from IULM University in Milan, where he studied under masters such as Andrea Caccia, Gianni Canova, and Michelangelo Frammartino. His thesis, Slow Cinema: Minimalist Aesthetics between Mexico and Southeast Asia, explored global minimalist film movements.
In 2021, he made his first short film, Cecità (Blindness), a dystopian reimagining of José Saramago’s novel, starring Luca Cerri and Celeste Dalla Porta. His research continued with La Lastra (2022), a coming-of-age short film he wrote and directed, exploring pre-adolescent love. The film won First Prize at the 2023 Sottodiciotto Film Festival & Campus and is currently distributed by WeShort.
Since 2023, Donatini has collaborated with the production company Basement Headquarter, for which he has directed his first advertising campaigns for brands such as Baracuta and Unimatic. That same year, he founded the Anpi Londa Film Festival, an international showcase dedicated to cinema about resistance and human rights, now in its sixth edition.
Also in 2023, he was selected for numerous national and international film residencies — including La Guarimba, Occhi sul Lago, Naufragare at Bellaria Film Festival, Nouvelle Bug, and Officine IED — where he worked under directors such as Andrea Gatopoulos, Alessandro Comodin, and Silvio Soldini. These experiences led to two socially impactful works:
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AEOLUS, a documentary made entirely in machinima style, investigating the 2022 fire that struck the island of Stromboli due to a film production. The film received an Honorable Mention at SediciCorto, won the Pirate Cinema Award at ArteSettima, and had its international premiere at FIDBA, Latin America’s most important documentary festival.
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Ronzìo, a fiction short film produced by Officine IED in collaboration with Indiana, tells the story of Alma, a young student with ADHD facing the challenges of the contemporary world. The film won numerous awards, including Best Direction at FEDIC Academy, Milano Shorts Film Festival, and Tulipani di Seta Nera, as well as the Critics’ Award at Roma Film Corto.
In 2024, Donatini took part in a film workshop in Mexico under the supervision of Golden Leopard winner Pedro Costa. From this experience came De donde vienes, Silencio, an Italy–Spain co-production (PlayLab Films and Basement Headquarter), distributed by Nieminen and premiered at Alice nella città – Festa del Cinema di Roma in the section Ondecorte – Panorama Italia.
At the same time, he is working on his first feature-length documentary, The Lobster (working title), produced by Basement Headquarter and dedicated to the life of photographer and artist Jacopo Benassi. His interest in underground aesthetics has been further refined through his collaboration with Tekla Taidelli — first as assistant editor on the film 6:06, and later as co-director of the short Il pasto nudo (The Naked Lunch), developed as part of his work as a tutor at the Civica Scuola di Cinema Luchino Visconti in Milan, where he continues to collaborate.
Through symbolism and the blending of different languages, Donatini combines the personal and the universal, the local and the global, maintaining a strong intimate and cathartic tension in his storytelling. In his films, the individual appears fragile and at the mercy of events, in a constant dialogue between the inner and outer worlds, between subjectivity and objectivity. All his works are characterized by a continuous stylistic pursuit and linguistic experimentation.
Niccolò Donatini currently lives in Rome and is represented by Volver Actor.