↑ Back to credits

NAPOLI NEW YORK

2023 · Director: Gabriele Salvatores

Production Designer: Rita Rabassini

Paco Cinematografica — Trieste / Rijeka, Italy / Croatia

SUPERVISING ART DIRECTOR

Naples, 1949. Two orphaned children secretly board a ship bound for New York, dreaming of escaping post-war poverty. Based on an unproduced screenplay by Federico Fellini and Tullio Pinelli, discovered seventy years later. Dir. Gabriele Salvatores, Academy Award winner for Mediterraneo. Cast: Pierfrancesco Favino, Dea Lanzaro, Antonio Guerra.

✦ From the set: Trieste's brick architecture and port districts became 1940s New York. Tito's yacht became an Italian ocean liner. A city became another city. A dictator's vessel became a vessel of hope.

The production required the transformation of three distinct worlds. The bombed streets of wartime Naples were filmed on location. Trieste — with its brick architecture and historic port — became 1940s New York.

The third element was the ship: after an extensive search across Europe, the production located the former yacht of Josip Broz Tito, moored in Kraljevica, Croatia — the only available vessel with a profile close to a 1940s Italian ocean liner. As Supervising Art Director, Romolo Pompa led its complete scenic transformation into a transatlantic bound for New York.

2022 · Director: Saverio Costanzo

Production Designer: Laura Pozzaglio

Wildside — Rome, Italy

SUPERVISING ART DIRECTOR

FINALLY DOWN

Rome, 1953. A shy young woman follows her sister to Cinecittà for an audition and is swept into a transformative night alongside glamorous Hollywood stars. Inspired by the real unsolved murder of Wilma

Montesi. Premiered in competition at the 80th Venice International Film Festival. Cast: Lily James, Willem

Dafoe, Joe Keery.

One of the most ambitious Italian film sets in recent years. Two distinct worlds were built: post-war Rome reconstructed in exterior locations, and the Cinecittà studios of the 1950s where a full Egyptian peplum epic was shot within the film. The centrepiece was the Temple of Thebes — eleven weeks of construction, a sixty-metre palace flanked by sculpted rock walls, a monumental staircase decorated with hieroglyphics, earth and sand covering the ground. The rocks were built on wooden walkways clad in polystyrene, worked with acetone to reproduce ancient weathered stone.

✦ From the set: All exterior sets had been dressed in summer heat — tons of sand laid over concrete to bring 1950s Cinecittà back to life. Then a sudden summer storm hit. In minutes, everything was washed away.

The crew rebuilt from scratch.

↑ Back to credits

↑ Back to credits

007 · NO TIME TO DIE

2019 · Director: Cary Fukunaga

Production Designer: Mark Tildesley

Lotus Film — Matera, Italy

ART DIRECTOR JR

James Bond has left active service. When a kidnapped scientist leads him to a bioterrorist plot threatening millions, 007 is pulled back into the field for one final mission. The 25th Bond film and Daniel Craig's farewell to the role.

Cast: Daniel Craig, Léa Seydoux, Rami Malek, Ana de Armas.

✦ From the set: Matera is a small city. The Bond crew numbered at least five hundred — plus tourists, because that year Matera was the European Capital of Culture. The whole city was the set, and the whole world wanted to watch.

Matera was transformed into one of the most complex open-air sets in Bond history. Every door, window and architectural element in the city centre was replaced with scenographic versions. Ramps were built for motorcycle stunts. The streets of Matera were then reconstructed at 1:1 scale on an abandoned airstrip — sections up to five hundred metres long — so stunt drivers could rehearse every sequence before filming in the city itself.

↑ Back to credits

SUSPIRIA

2017 · Director: Luca Guadagnino

Production Designer: Inbal Weinberg

Frenesy Film — Varese, Italy

ART DIRECTOR

Berlin, 1977. A young American dancer joins a prestigious academy that conceals a dark and terrifying secret. A radical reimagining of Dario Argento's horror classic. Premiered at the 75th Venice InternationalFilm Festival.

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth, Chloe Grace Moretz.

✦ From the set: The hotel was almost always wrapped in dry ice fog. And every time someone went down to the basement, they discovered a new space. A new room, a new corridor, a new undergroundworld. The building never stopped revealing itself.

The entire film was shot inside the Hotel Campo dei Fiori in Varese — a breathtaking Art Nouveau hotel built in the 1920s, open for only twenty years before becoming a military hospital. Every decorative Liberty element was concealed and the hotel transformed into a severe 1960s-70s Berlin dance academy.

Beneath the hotel, a labyrinth of underground spaces — ancient kitchens, a cellar carved into rock, hiddencorridors — became the dark heart of the production.

↑ Back to credits

I WAS A STRANGER

2022 · Director: Brandt Anderson

Production Designer: Julie Berghoff

Philistine Film - Amman, Jordan

SUPERVISING ART DIRECTOR

Syria, present day. An explosion in Aleppo triggers a chain of events connecting five families across four continents. Each caught in the devastating human cost of the refugee crisis. Winner of the Amnesty International Film Award at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival.

Cast: Omar Sy, Yasmine Al Massri, Yahya Mahayni, Ziad Bakri.

✦ From the set: The reconstruction was so convincing that local residents began to believe a real explosion had occurred.

The set had to be explained to the neighbourhood.

A residential building in central Amman was dismantled and entirely rebuilt on a new location — transformed into a bombed-out ruin with rubble, debris and destroyed vehicles. The complete build was delivered in one month. The set was dressed to the standard required by a film shot with real Syrian refugees as extras, directed by an activist who had spent years documenting the crisis on the ground.

↑ Back to credits

ROCK THE KASBAH

2015 · Director: Barry Levinson

Production Designer: Niels Sejer

NBC Universal / Dune Film - Marrakech, Morocco

ART DIRECTOR ASSISITANT

A down-on-his-luck rock manager travels to Afghanistan and discovers a young woman with anextraordinary voice.

Shot on location in Morocco. Cast: Bill Murray, Kate Hudson, Bruce Willis, ZooeyDeschanel.

✦ From the set: Barry Levinson came to visit the art department. He was directed through the workshop — and came face to face with the entire crew gathered around a single table: production designer, art directors, carpenters.

And Barry Levinson, sitting down among them.

The production was set across Marrakech's colonial locations and medina districts. The central construction was Merci's Trailer — the caravan home of the protagonist, built to 1:20 scale with fully detailed interiors and custom elevations. Every surface designed to feel lived-in and authentic against the backdrop of Morocco.

↑ Back to credits

6 UNDERGROUND

2018 · Director: Michael Bay

Production Designer: Jeffrey Beecroft

Netflix / Panorama Film - Rome / Dubai - Italy / UAE

ASix billionaires fake their deaths to form a vigilante squad, racing across Rome, Florence and beyond to take down a ruthless dictator. A high-octane action spectacular directed by Michael Bay for Netflix. Cast:Ryan Reynolds, Mélanie Laurent, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo

✦ From the set: When the carpenter was asked to make the first cut into the ceiling, he stopped and asked: 'Shall I proceed?' There was a pause. Then: 'Proceed.' That moment said everything about what it means to build something magnificent — and then take it apart for the shot.

The production turned Rome, Florence and Siena upside down with high-speed car chases. Thecentrepiece set at Cinecittà was the Galley Kitchen — a fully magnetic ship's kitchen where a giant magnetsends every knife and metal object flying across the room. Every blade was rigged with invisible wire threaded through the furniture. The set also featured movable ceilings — surgically opened and closed around every shot.

↑ Back to credits

BANG BANG BABY

2018 · Director: Michele Alhaique

Production Designer: Tamara Marini

Amazon Prima / Wildside - Rome, Italy

A young woman in 1980s Italy discovers her father is a powerful mob boss, torn between glamour and the life she has always known. An Amazon Prime Video original series. Cast: Arianna Becheroni, Adriano Giannini, Antonio Gerardi.

✦ From the set: The series was shot during Covid, in full red zone lockdown. Rome was empty. A commute that normally took two hours took ten minutes. The price: continuous swabs, every single day.

The centrepiece set was Casa Nonna Lina — built across two locations: interiors on stage, exteriors in Rome. Every detail was reconstructed to recreate 1980s Italy with precision — wallpapers, floor tiles, furniture, objects, colours. A period that rewards obsessive attention to detail.

↑ Back to credits

BECKETT

2019 · Director: Dir. Ferdinando Cito Filomarino

Production Designer: Elliot Hostetter

Netflix / Frenesy - Tspepelovo, Greece

An American tourist in Greece becomes the target of a political conspiracy and must flee across the country to reach the US Embassy in Athens. Shot entirely in Greece. Cast: John David Washington, AliciaVikander, Boyd Holbrook..

✦ From the set: The art department office was an abandoned school in Zepelovo, accessible only through the village cemetery. One night, colleagues drove up from Athens, hid inside the school and made ghost voices from the dark. The scream was heard across the village.

he production was set in the remote mountain villages of Epirus. The central set was a sawmill in Tsepelovo — population eighty — transformed into a fully dressed location in one month. Additional sets were built across the same village. Shooting also took place at the breathtaking Vikos Gorge — one of the deepest canyons in the world — with roads running along sheer drops with no guardrail.

NIKE COMPAIGN

2026 · Director: Geek Files

Ear To The Ground UK- Italy, Rome

ART DIRECTOR

Global brand campaign for Nike. Shot across Rome and Manchester.

↑ Back to credits

↑ Back to credits

AMERICAN ODYSSEY

2015 · Director: Peter Horton

PD: Kristi Zea

Dune Film / HBO - Marrakech, Morocco

ART DIRECTOR ASSISTANT

The production ranged across Morocco's most remote locations — the pink granite valleys of Tafraout in the Anti-Atlas mountains, the coastal town of Tiznit, and the beaches of Agadir. Sets included a shaman's house so authentic that locals warned it could attract negative spiritual energy, and a natural-looking rockpool built from scratch, invisible within the landscape.

A US Special Forces soldier discovers proof that a corporation is funding terrorists and must survive alonein North Africa. An NBC Universal series shot entirely in Morocco across six to eight months. Cast: Anna

Friel, Daniella Pineda, Jake Robinson.

✦ From the set: The art department was based above the Atlantic in Tiznit — a remote fishing village with no electricity. The office was a house on the ocean. Lunches with the sound of waves below. One of

the most beautiful places any art department has ever worked from.