Saverio Costanzo’s cinema has always moved between the truth of individuals and the psychological substance of human relationships, along a path that, film after film, brings together both the lives of people and the historical or environmental contexts in which those lives unfold. This is already evident in one of his early works, Sala rossa, a documentary shot in the Emergency Room of Rome’s Policlinico Hospital, which earned him acclaim at the Turin Film Festival in 2002. The film’s immediate, direct approach became the starting point for his ability to work within a complex setting, thus weaving a precise narrative fabric that he would later apply to fictional cinema. This same method became the strength of Private, his fiction feature debut in 2004, which won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. Set in the Middle East, the film addresses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a lengthy face to-face encounter between an Arab family and a group of Israeli soldiers who occupy their home. The confrontation grows into palpable tension with opposing viewpoints, heightening not only political and historical position but also the possibilities of human connection. In this way, Private fully develops the theme of coexistence within a confined space—a motif that would become a central focus throughout his later works. This is demonstrated superbly in his second film, In Memory of Myself, where the young protagonist withdraws from secular life to begin his novitiate in a monastery, seeking to understand within its walls the true nature of of his interrelation with existence. The correlations are inverted compared to his debut, and Costanzo charts a path where the individual’s relationship with self becomes the principal dramatic core, without overlooking the vital issue of relationship with others—whether to include or exclude them from one’s life.

This is clearly a fundamental concern for the director, one he revisits in his next film, The Solitude of Prime Numbers (2010), based on Paolo Giordano’s novel. Here, the emotional bond uniting the two protagonists unfolds through a drama that creates a psychological connection in opposition to the world. While his style is both immersive and fragmented, it gives shape to a cinema that feeds on visual emotions and sharp, painful intensity. In his subsequent film, Hungry Hearts (2014), adapted from Marco Franzoso’s novel, the blend between the depth of drama and the sometimes dissonant tension of the mise-en-scène becomes fertile and complete: everything is an internal conflict between love and fear, acceptance and repulsion, tolerance and detachment—all rooted in the story of a mother obsessively trying to protect her child from the world, and a father attempting to save him from the risks posed by that all-consuming love.

This path, grounded in an introspective investigation of relationships and emotions, continues in Costanzo’s subsequent work: the Italian adaptation of the series In Treatment, where a brilliant ensemble cast, led by Sergio Castellitto, gives each episode significant dramatic impact. A more classically structured approach defines his acclaimed television adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel, My Brilliant Friend, for which Costanzo directed the first two seasons, adopting a style that oscillates between dreamlike realism and the subterranean tensions of a destabilizing Neapolitan reality.

That same fluid approach—between rigorous staging and dreamlike undertones that punctuate the protagonist’s existential journey—also marks his most recent film, Finally Dawn. This significant production recreates postwar Rome, suspended between working-class neighborhoods and the avenues of Cinecittà: the dream of a cinema that converses with real life through the enchanting tools of fiction.

Davide Di Giorgio