Giada Colagrande

Italian film director and actress.

Colagrande was born in Pescara, Abruzzo, Italy. She studied in Italy, Switzerland and Australia, and in 1995 she moved to Rome where she began making video art and documentaries on contemporary art.

From 1997 to 2000, she joined the art project VOLUME, making a series of video portraits of seven contemporary artists: Jannis Kounellis, Alfredo Pirri, Bernhard Rüdiger, Nunzio, Raimund Kummer, Gianni Dessí, Maurizio Savini and Sol LeWitt.

She made three short films: “Carnaval” (1997), “Fetus – 4 brings death” (1999), and “n.3” (2000).

In 2001, she wrote, directed and starred in her first feature film, Aprimi il Cuore (Open My Heart), which opened at the Venice Film Festival 2002, and then was selected by many international film festivals, such as the Tribeca Film Festival 2003, in competition, and Paris Cinéma 2003, where it won the award Prix de l’avenir. Giada was also nominated for Best New Director at the Silver Ribbon 2003. Open my Heart was released in Italy by Lucky Red and in the USA by Strand Releasing.

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 opened at the Venice Film Festival 2005, was then showed in San Sebastian Film Festival and various other international festivals. It was distributed worldwide by Millennium with the title Black Widow.