Michelangelo Antonioni

Michelangelo Antonioni (29 September 1912 – 30 July 2007) was an Italian director and filmmaker. Known for his "trilogy on modernity and its discontents"—L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), and L'Eclisse (1962), the English-language film Blowup (1966) and The Passenger (1975), his films have been described as 'enigmatic and intricate mood pieces' that feature elusive plots, striking visual composition, and focus on modern landscapes. His work significantly influenced art cinema. Antonioni received numerous awards and nominations throughout his career, being the only director to have won the Palme d'Or, the Golden Lion, the Golden Bear and the Golden Leopard.

Antonioni was born into a family of landowners in Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna. He showed early interest in drawing and music, giving his first concert at the age of nine. He developed passion for architecture and this inspired his storytelling and filmmaking. After graduating from the University of Bologna with a degree in economics, he started writing for the Ferrara newspaper Il Corriere Padano in 1935 as a film journalist. He worked for Cinema, the official Fascist film magazine in Rome and later enrolled at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia to study film technique. Throughout his career, Antonioni's films reflected his rich, alive, and serviceable perception of the world.