Biography
Gianni Aureli is an Italian film director, born in Rome in 1981. He holds a PhD in Music and Performing Arts from Sapienza University of Rome and trained under Giampietro Calasso and Massimiliano Bruno.
He started in theatre and short films. In 2015 he brought Carta Canta to the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, where it ran until 2018; among his seven shorts, Notte di Marzo alone won thirteen awards in twenty-two festivals.
His debut feature came in 2019: Fight Like Eagles (Aquile Randagie), the true story of a group of Italian scouts who kept their movement alive in secret after fascism outlawed it, and who during the war brought more than two thousand people to safety. A low-budget period film shot in four weeks, it was released by Istituto Luce Cinecittà on more than 250 screens, drew 180,000 admissions and ranked second at the Italian box office in its first three days, behind Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. In January 2020 it was screened at the European Parliament in Brussels.
In 2024 he directed the documentary Avvino, on a wine-growing community in central Italy. In 2026 La Terza Volta reached Italian cinemas: named best Italian feature at COLIFFE and nominated for best direction at the DEA Film Festival in Tirana.
He teaches directing, sits on the board of the Italian Directors Association (AIR3) and is co-founder and president of Webreak Production.