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.
007 · NO TIME TO DIE
2019 · Director: Cary Fukunaga
Production Designer: Mark Tildesley
Lotus Film — Matera, Italy
ART DIRECTOR
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.
SUSPIRIA
2017 · Director: Luca Guadagnino
Production Designer: Inbal Weinberg
Frenesy Film — Varese, Italy
ART DIRECTOR
JBerlin, 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.
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.
ROCK THE KASBAH
2015 · Director: Barry Levinson
Production Designer: Niels Sejer
NBC Universal / Dune Film - Marrakech, Morocco
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.
O NIGHT DIVINE
2022 · Director: Luca Guadagnino
Production Designer: Romolo Pompa
Paco Cinematografica — St. Moritz, Switzerland
Christmas Eve at the legendary Suvretta House hotel in St. Moritz. Five strangers find their lives magically intersecting in a night of unexpected adventures. A 43-minute short film commissioned by Zara, music by Alberto Iglesias. Cast: John C. Reilly, Alex Wolff, Hailey Gates.
✦ From the set: A special effects team was on standby to produce artificial snow — it was cold but the
sky stayed clear. Then, two days before shooting, real snow fell. The landscape became the most
perfect set dressing no budget could have bought.
The entire Suvretta House — one of the great grand hotels of the Swiss Alps — was dressed from scratch for Christmas. Every corridor, salon and common space transformed into a festive world, with decorations, trees and objects supplied by Zara. As Production Designer, Romolo Pompa coordinated the complete scenic dressing of the hotel across all floors and spaces.
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.
Work in Progress
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.