Manuele Gerosa

Biography

Emanuele Gerosa was born in 1975 in Rovereto, Italy; in 2001 he graduated in Contemporary History at the University of Bologna and in the same year he began working as a filmmaker. Very early he became interested in documentaries, directing his passion from studying History to telling the Stories of ordinary people with a video camera. In 2007 he began collaborating with an Italian NGO to make his first two medium-length documentaries. Kamenge Northern Quarters in Burundi and Lion Souls in Zimbabwe. Both films were selected in several international festivals, winning various awards, including the “Silver Audience Award” at the 15th Amnesty International Film Festival in 2010 in Canada. These experiences convinced Emanuele to dedicate himself completely to the world of documentaries. In 2015 he completed his first feature-length documentary Between Sisters, the intimate portrait of his mother Ornella and his aunt Teresa, two sisters who must come to terms with their past and face a painful secret that could change their bond forever. The film traveled to numerous festivals worldwide and received several awards, including the “Special Mention” at the Semana Internacional de Cine de Valladolid in Spain in 2016 and the “Special Mention Audio Visual Discovery” from the Society of French Authors (SCAM) in 2017. In 2019 he accomplished his second feature-length documentary One More Jump. The film follows the life of Jehad and Abdallah, two parkour athletes who grew up together in the Gaza Strip, but today are divided by their choices, they need to discover if there is a path that can lead to freedom for someone who, like them, was born in a prison. The film made a journey to many international festivals and received numerous awards. Amongst others the “PRIX EUROPA for Best European TV Documentary” in 2020 and the “Étoiles de la Scam” from the Society of French Authors in 2021. Between 2021 and 2023 he directed the documentary Bambini di Frontiera, the story of the A. De Gasperi Border Institute in Trentino, which between 1957 and 1996, hosted thousands of boys and girls, children of Southern Italian families who emigrated to Germany in search of a better future. The film has been presented in 2024 at the Trento Film Festival, winning the “Cinema AMoRe” award. Currently, Emanuele is working on several new documentaries. They all focus on personal stories, touching on intimate topics but at the same time bringing out universal themes. Since 2021 Emanuele has been a member of the European Film Academy.