Italy

Gillo Pontecorvo

3 films · 1960 to 1969

Born 19 November 1919, Pisa · Died 12 October 2006

Gilberto Pontecorvo Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian filmmaker associated with the political cinema movement of the 1960s and '70s. He is best known for directing the landmark war docudrama The Battle of Algiers (1966). It won the Golden Lion at the 27th Venice Film Festival, and earned him Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. His other films include Kapò (1960), a Holocaust drama; Burn! (1969), a period film about a fictional slave revolt in the Lesser Antilles; and Ogro (1979), a dramatization of the assassination of Spanish Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco by Basque separatists. He also directed several documentaries and short films. In 2000, he received the Pietro Bianchi Award at the Venice Film Festival. The same year, he was ascended as a Knight's Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

Biography adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.