This retrospective took place in Winter 2016.

Northwest Film Forum is proud to present the first Seattle retrospective of the work of Gianfranco Rosi. Throughout his career, the Italian director, cinematographer, producer and screenwriter has pushed the boundaries of the documentary form. His 2013 film Sacro GRA, which depicts life along the ring-road highway that circles Rome, became the first documentary to win the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival, during the festival’s 70th edition. This year, Fire at Sea (2016), which centers on a young boy living on a Sicilian island that has become the entry point for migrants seeking refuge in Europe, won the Golden Bear at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival and has been put forward as Italy’s foreign language film submission and a candidate for Best Documentary for the Academy Awards. The themes and settings of his films range from a portrait of life and death on the Ganges River, to a chronicle of the outcasts and bohemians who inhabit a California shanty town, to an exploration of the vagrants, gravediggers and others living on the fringes of Rome. Rosi’s films do not attempt to inform the audience, but rather to affect them on a deeper, more intuitive level. He has said, “I want to make something that somehow transforms the reality into something else. It becomes like a suspension of elements, where the audience has to start to interact with their own knowledge of things. Or maybe with their own emotional understanding of things, and then create their own world.” Rosi often spends years shooting his films, developing intensely intimate relationships with his subjects, and chronicling these through layered narratives and visual metaphors that examine the lived experiences of people through deeply political and distinctively artistic means.

Gianfranco Rosi was born in Eritrea in 1964. He studied at New York University Film School and currently lives and works in Manhattan.

Boatman (1993, doc), Afterwords (2001, short, co-dir), Below Sea Level (2008, doc) Sacro GRA (2013, doc), Fire at Sea (2016, doc).