Michael Di Jiacomo

Michael Di Jiacomo is a director and writer living in New York City. He started his career as a writer working for MacArthur Genius Award winning dance theater and opera director Martha Clark. Their work together included collaborations with circus performers, acrobats and ballerinas. He has written and directed two feature films. His first, Animals, premiered at Sundance, and won or was nominated for several awards including winning the Special Jury Prize at the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival in Japan and the Best Director award at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain. His second feature, Somewhere Tonight, premiered at Karlovy Vary, and won Best Film at the American Film Festival in Poland and Best Actor at the San Diego Film Festival. His work as a screenwriter includes The Revenge of the Green Dragons, a film he co-wrote, with Martin Scorcese executive producing and Andrew Lau directing; the Italian war epic Castlenuovo, which Roman Polanski asked him to write; Prince Jack, which John Turturro asked him to write, with Spike Lee producing; The Light Princess for director Gore Verbinski and Twentieth Century Fox; Sunset for Ben Barenholtz; Salvatori for Vision Pictures Australia; 1961; Citizen X, for Mark Cuban's 2929 Productions; and a loose adaptation of the James Ellroy novel Clandestine for TBS. Michael attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts graduate film program where he won a Student Academy Award, the W.T.C. Johnson Fellowship, and a Mobile Award. He was a writing and directing fellow at the Sundance Institute where he was mentored by Terry Gilliam, Volker Schlondorff, Stanley Donen and Glenn Close. He was given a grant from the Aaron Diamond Foundation for his work there. His play, The Happiest Day/The Man Who Isn't There, had a four month critically acclaimed run in Holland in 2015. He directed Brandon Cole's play Imperfect Love in New York in 2018.