| Filippo Piscopo | |
| Birth Place: | Italy |
| Nationality: | Italian, American |
| Occupation: | Documentary filmmaker |
Filippo Piscopo is an Italian and American documentary filmmaker based in New York City. He is also an adjunct associate professor of film at St. John's University.[1] Piscopo collaborates frequently with his wife and filmmaking partner, Lorena Luciano, and together they have produced, directed, and filmed multiple documentary films. Their work has been supported by, among others, the Sundance Institute, the International Documentary Association (IDA),[2] and the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). Their films have been featured at international film festivals such as the Venice Film Festival,[3] Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), Sheffield Doc/Fest, AFI Docs,[4] the IDFA Forum, and the Gotham/IFP's Spotlight on Documentaries.
Piscopo is the director of photography for the 2024 Academy Award-nominated short documentary The ABCs of Book Banning, directed by Sheila Nevins, Trish Adlesic, and Nazeneth Habtezghi.[5] [6] [7] The film, currently streaming on Paramount+, addresses the politically charged debate on book bans in American schools.
Filippo Piscopo is a dual citizen of Italy and the United States. Born and raised in Italy, he studied law at the University of Milan before relocating to New York City in 1996. Along with his wife Lorena Luciano, he co-founded the production company Film2 Productions.[8]
Piscopo's work primarily focuses on creating documentary films. His first documentary, Dario Fo and Franca Rame: a Nobel for Two, premiered at the 1998 Venice Film Festival and was widely distributed to universities and institutions worldwide. The film features interviews with Dario Fo, his wife and collaborator Franca Rame, as well as their close colleagues. It also draws from Fo's extensive, largely unseen archive, which Piscopo helped uncover and supervised its restoration.[9] [10]
Piscopo's earlier works include Urbanscapes,[11] also co-directed with Lorena Luciano, which documents four different US metropolises through residents and artists who witnessed the dramatic transformation of their neighborhoods.[12] Urbanscapes had a theatrical release in New York City in 2006, extended by popular demand. It has received positive reviews from Variety,[13] The Village Voice,[14] the New York Times,[15] and Corriere della Sera.
In 2012, Piscopo and Luciano premiered their Vérité-style documentary Coal Rush,[16] a five-year project about a corporate environmental disaster in West Virginia, debuting in competition at the Atlanta Film Festival.[17] [18] [19] [20] The documentary originally set out to explore the hardships of thousands of Italian immigrants to West Virginia, who in the early 1900s were recruited to work underpaid in deplorable working and living conditions. Once he started doing field research, Piscopo found out about Mingo County, where a coal company allegedly contaminated the drinking water of local coal miners by injecting billions of gallons of coal waste underground. The discovery turned Coal Rush into a five-year investigation of an environmental disaster caused by alleged corporate malfeasance. The case was eventually settled without the company admitting guilt, and Coal Rush stands as the sole testimony of Mingo County's plight.[21] [22]
Coal Rush won several awards, including the Sustainable Business Award at Cinema Verde (2012)[23] the Audience Award at the Milan Film Festival (2014),[24] and the Social Justice Award by Amy Goodman in New York City (2014).[25] [26] Coal Rush was distributed by The Orchard/1091 to platforms such as Hulu, Starz, Amazon Prime Video,[27] and Apple TV.[28] It was also a finalist nominee for the Environmental Award at CMS Vatavaran in India (2014)[29] and was featured at Cannes Docs Marché du Film (2014).[30]
His latest HBO film project, It Will Be Chaos, co-directed with Lorena Luciano, explores the mid-2010s European refugee crisis. The film follows the journey of two refugee families while also examining the impact of the migrant crisis on local communities. It Will Be Chaos premiered on HBO during World Refugee Week in 2018, and went on to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary in 2019.[31] After debuting at the Seattle International Film Festival and going on to a sold-out AFI Docs screening in Washington DC,[4] the film garnered the Best Directing Award at the 2018 Taormina Film Festival.[32] It was also shortlisted for the David di Donatello Awards (Italian Oscars) in 2019 and has been translated into more than 10 languages.
In addition to his filmmaking work, Piscopo has served as a senior producer for RAI (Italian Public TV) and other European television networks, covering significant events in the United States, such as Hurricane Katrina, the September 11 terrorist attacks, and multiple U.S. presidential campaigns.
Currently, Piscopo is working on #NunsToo,[33] a Sundance Institute and IDA-supported feature documentary directed by Lorena Luciano. The film investigates the
Piscopo currently also teaches as an adjunct associate professor of film at St. John's University in New York City.[35]
Piscopo is based in Brooklyn with his wife Lorena Luciano and their two sons.[31]