Italian film director, writer and painter, born 29 September 1912 in Ferrara, Italy and died 30 July 2007 in Rome, Italy.
He graduated in economics at Bologna University, he reached Rome in 1940 where he attended specifical studies at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Cinecitta. Here he met some of the artists with whom he will cooperate in the next years; among them Roberto Rossellini.
He described himself as a Marxist intellectual, but some authors advance some doubts about his effective adherence to that ideology.