Folco Quilici

Folco Quilici (9 April 1930 – 24 February 2018) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. He directed a total of 22 films between 1952 and his retirement in 2005, including Tiko and the Shark (it). His 1955 film L'ultimo paradiso won the Silver Bear in the documentary category at the 7th Berlin International Film Festival.

Biography

Son of journalist Nello Quilici and painter Mimì Quilici Buzzacchi, he was born in the beautiful city Ferrara on 9 April 1930. His father Nello, who was a famous journalist, tragically died during the war in what has been remembered as the incident of Tobruch, a fatal plane crush above Libia. The airplane on which the journalist was traveling along with Italo Balbo, Lino Balbo, and other collaborators of the governor was shot down in the skies of Tobruk by the anti-aircraft fire from the Italian cruiser San Giorgio. All the passengers perished. An hypothesis, never confirmed but widespread, suggests that the downing was not accidental but rather deliberate, a homicide caused by the disagreements between Balbo and Mussolini. Quilici left a testimony of his brief experience in Libya in the War Diary kept from June 12 to June 21, 1940.

After the war he moved with his mother and his brother Vieri in via Sicilia in Rome where they lived with his aunt. There he studied at the "Torquato Tasso" high school, and soon after he embarked on a career in amateur filmmaking and specialized in underwater filming, becoming very popular also beyond national borders. He studied directing at the Experimental Cinematography Center.

He was registered as a journalist with the National Order of Journalists on February 19, 1963, and for this he was awarded by the same Order in 2013 for his 50 years of journalistic activity.