Thomas Torelli

Biography

Thomas Torelli is a Rome based director and producer of films and documentaries with particular emphasis on those related to social themes. After a long experience as an editor and executive producer, Thomas founded Xtend in 2001, a company operating in the field of production and post-production for film and television, and in 2003 Telemaco. He has collaborated with different roles at some of the most interesting titles of the independent Italian cinema of recent years, such CRAJ by Davide Marengo awarded the Lino Miccichè Award for the Best Opera Prima at the Venice Film Festival 2005 (co-editor); Dall’altra parte della Luna, the first Italian “rockumentary”, story of the group Negramaro, presented at the Venice Film Festival 2007 (director of post-production). In 2006 he served as executive producer and co-author on Franco Fracassi and Francesco Trento’s feature documentary ZERO: An Investigation into 9/11 where revealing presentations by Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo and American literary icon Gore Vidal explore the sequence of “contradictions, gaps, and omissions” in the official version of events surrounding the attacks. ZERO was presented at the International Film Festival of Rome 2007 and was winner of the Audience Award at the Festival Internacional de Cine Documental de la Ciudad de México in 2008. Distributed in more than 70 countries in five continents in theaters, on DVD and on television, the film has become the movie-symbol of the struggle for the truth about September 11th. As a producer, Thomas has made several documentaries, including Dario Baldi’s Pablo - The poet’s lives, a journey to the memory of a great Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, presented at the AFI Film Festival of Los Angeles 2005 and the Montreal Film Festival 2006. In 2007, Francesca Nava’s L’altro Messico – Il ritorno del Subcomandante Marcos. 50% of the profit of this film was donated to the Zapatista communities. Mario Balsamo’s Sognavo le nuvole colorate, a documentary about the history of Edison Duraj, a nine-year old Albanian child who emigrated to Italy on a raft, alone without his parents. The film was presented at the 2008 Locarno Film Festival. In 2009 he produced and directed Sangue e Cemento, the first documentary about the earthquake in Abruzzo,  released in theaters and nominated at the Nastri d’Argento for Best Documentary of the Year. In 2011, he co-edited and produced, with the contribution of the Piedmont Film Commission, The brat syndrome by Alberto Coletta, a documentary about ADHD (Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder) told through the story of Julia, a “hyperactive and inattentive” girl. He has just finished directing the documentary Another World, a journey through science and consciousness, individual and planetary, exploring our relationships with ourselves, the world around us and the universe as a whole, demonstrating how connected we really all are as opposed to the sense of separation that characterizes much of modern thought. In the summer of 2013, the production of the film documentary Serial Killers started, with the objective of being completed by the end of 2014.