Luca Bigazzi


Luca Bigazzi is an Italian cinematographer. He has won seven David di Donatello for Best Cinematography awards and received fourteen nominations, making him the highest awarded artist in this category. He is the first Italian cinematographer to be nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award in the Outstanding Cinematography for a Limited Series or Movie category, for the 2016 series The Young Pope by Paolo Sorrentino. He has worked with directors such as Silvio Soldini, Mario Martone, Felice Farina, Gianni Amelio, Francesca Archibugi, Michele Placido, Abbas Kiarostami, and Paolo Sorrentino.

Career

Bigazzi started working in the advertising field in 1977 as assistant director, and at the same time he cultivated his passion for photography. He shifted to working in cinema in 1983, and his debut as director of photography was in that year's Silvio Soldini film Paesaggio con figure, which was screened at the Locarno Film Festival. Gradually, Bigazzi devoted himself more and more to cinema, abandoning the advertising field. His partnership with Soldini would continue in many other films, and he won his second David di Donatello award for 2000's Bread and Tulips. In 1994, he worked with Gianni Amelio on Lamerica, which won him his first David di Donatello as well as a Nastro d'Argento. In 1999, he was awarded the Osella d'oro award in Venice for The Way We Laughed by Amelio and Shooting the Moon by Francesca Archibugi. He has also collaborated with Mario Martone, Giuseppe Piccioni, and Ciprì & Maresco.
Bigazzi followed his early successes with work on Paolo Sorrentino's films, beginning with The Consequences of Love, for which he won the Nastro d'Argento in 2005, then The Family Friend, Il divo, This Must Be the Place, for which he won a David di Donatello in 2012, The Great Beauty, winner of the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film in 2014, and finally Youth, which won best film at the European Film Awards in 2015.
Bigazzi collaborated with Francesca Comencini in 2001 on The Words of My Father and again in 2002 on the creation of the documentary Carlo Giuliani, Boy, which screened out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival that same year. The film addresses the death of Carlo Giuliani, who was killed in Genoa by a police officer during the demonstrations against the G8 in 2001.

Selected filmography