GIOVANNI COVINI
Born in Milan in 1968, he graduated in film direction at the Paolo Grassi Drama School in Milan. After several experiences of filmmaking in contact with the realities of drug addiction and alcoholism, in 2005 he won the David di Donatello Award and in 2006 the Silver Ribbon for Best Short with the documentary "Un inguaribile amore". a documentary of 16’. In 2007, he shot the medium-length film "A tutto quello che si muove" and, in the same year, the medium-length film "Nella città che cambia". In 2009, he wrote the dramaturgy of "Atalanta's Travels" for the Teatro Gioco Vita in Piacenza, staged at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, in Spain and France in different seasons. In 2012, he published Le ferite dell’Eroe, published by Dino Audino Editore, an educational text on character building and story structure. Since 2000 he has held workshops for various companies, using storytelling techniques in team building courses. He is acting coach for the training of actors attending auditions for national and international films; he is a story analyst and holds several workshops in Italy on narrative structures, character building and elements of film direction. In the two-year period 2017/2018 he shot the feature film "Who's Romeo".

Director's statement
"The idea of making WHO’S ROMEO was born on July 14th 2016, when in Nice a man driving a truck overwhelms the crowd walking on the Promenade des Anglais. The war between two civilizations had landed on a romantic waterfront, sowing death. Then, I felt the need to meet young people of both civilizations. Two civilizations were facing each other in a warlike manner, but they still remained expression of great cultures in themselves. Even Montecchi and Capuleti were two great families which entered the war. And even in that case the war overwhelmed the love of the two young people. The film is the story of this journey. […] At the end of the film we know that the walls between civilizations are always high, thick and well patrolled. But the walls are overtaken by Romeo’s love. Love knows nothing of the faults of the fathers, it wants to be here, now, with its wonderful ignorance of the past: a boy loves a girl. That’s all. It doesn’t matter if things sometimes go wrong - this can always happen in life - but we believe that anyone who skips a wall in the night for any kind of love, makes our world better".