Erik Gandini | |
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Erik Gandini in 2015
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Born |
Bergamo, Italy |
14 August 1967
Occupation | Producer, director, writer |
Years active | 1994–present |
Erik Walter Gandini (born 14 August 1967) is an Italian-Swedish film director, writer, and producer and one of the co-founders of production company ATMO.
His film The Swedish Theory of Love premiered at the 2015 .
Erik Gandini moved to Sweden aged 19 to attend film school and avoid military service in Italy. After his studies at and having completed a master's degree in film science at , he started working as a documentary filmmaker.
In 1994, Gandini adventured with a fake letter of recommendation from a small local Swedish TV broadcaster to the besieged city of Sarajevo where he directed and produced his first documentary Raja Sarajevo for Sveriges Television. The film, shot on a small Hi-8 camera by cinematographer Martina Iverus, followed four young friends trying to survive the brutality of the siege. Raja Sarajevo was Gandini's international breakthrough and was presented at Berlin International Film Festival, at IDFA, Cinema du Reél in Paris.
In 2000, Erik Gandini founded the Stockholm-based film production company ATMO, together with Tarik Saleh, Lars Rodvald and Kristina Åberg. In 2013 Gandini moved to Fasad, working alongside Jesper Kurlandsky, Jesper Ganslandt and Juan Libossart.
Raja Sarajevo from 1994 (Raja means 'group of friends' in Bosnian) starred i.a. Enes Zlatar, leader of rock band Sikter and international artist Nebojsa Seric Soba, who at the time was a part-time art student and part-time soldier in the Bosnian army. In 1996, Erik Gandini shot a second documentary about the Balkan War, Not without Prijedor, about four young Bosnian refugees in Sweden who decided to return to their country to join the war. The same year he became part of a cult TV show on Swedish TV, ELBYL, where he met with Tarik Saleh.
His film Amerasians-the 100.000 children of the vietnam war from 1998 about the children of American soldiers and Vietnamese women was awarded the Silver Spire at the 1999 San Francisco International Film Festival
In 2001, he co-directed with Tarik Saleh the documentary film Sacrificio - Who Betrayed Che Guevara?. The film centers around , Che Guevara's Argentinian lieutenant and the person who more than other has been blamed in history books as guilty of Che's death.