Giada Colagrande was born in Pescara, Italy, on October 16, 1975. She studied in Italy, Switzerland and Australia before starting to make video art, documentaries on contemporary art and short fiction films in 1995. Between 1997 and 2000 she worked for the art project Volume, where she made video portraits of contemporary artists including Jannis Kounellis, Raimund Kummer and Sol LeWitt.
In 2001 she wrote, directed and starred in her first feature film, Aprimi il Cuore (Open My Heart), which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2002 and won the Prix de l’avenir Award at Paris Cinema 2003, before traveling to numerous other festivals, including the Tribeca Film Festival. In 2005 she directed her second feature Before it Had a Name, which she co-wrote and co-starred in with Willem Dafoe. The film also opened at Venice and then traveled to many other festivals, including San Sebastian Film Festival. In 2010 she wrote and directed her third feature A Woman, starring Willem Dafoe, which again premiered in Venice and went on to Festival do Rio, Santiago and Guadalajara film festivals, among many others.
In 2012, she directed a short film of the Prada series “The Miu Miu Women’s Tales”, The Woman Dress, which starred Maya Sansa. Also in 2012, she made the feature length film Bob Wilson’s Life & Death of Marina Abramovic, a documentary on the opera directed by Robert Wilson, based on Marina Abramovic’s biography, starring Abramovic herself, Robert Wilson, Willem Dafoe and Antony Hegarty. Her collaboration with performance artist Marina Abramovic continued with the film The Abramovic Method (2013).
All of Giada’s films as a director have premiered at the Venice Film Festival. As an actress, she has also performed in Abel Ferrara’s Pasolini (2014) and in Wes Anderson’s short film Castello Cavalcanti (2014).
Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia
