Vania Del Borgo

Vania Del Borgo is a producer and writer with a passion for social justice. She was born in Rome but grew up in New York. After earning a B.A. in Government from Oberlin College, Ohio, she worked as a subeditor and research director at The Nation magazine (1984-89). She moved to London in 1989 to earn an MSc in European Studies from the London School of Economics, and started working as a researcher and later as a producer/director at the independent Bandung Ltd. on a range of history and culture documentaries mainly for Channel 4. Among her UK credits are Dead West: The War on the American Desert (1994), The Hanged Man: Nigeria’s Shame (1995), An Open Letter to India (1996), Letters from America (1997) and Love Me Tender (1999). In 1999 she moved to Rome and worked as a producer/director for RAI’s thematic satellite channel RAI SAT ART and for the current affairs documentary series C’era una volta, broadcast by RAI 3. In 2002 she joined the independent production company Doclab, where she was responsible for coordinating project development and co-productions and where she co-wrote and produced the award-winning feature-length documentary Excellent Cadavers (2005), about the murder of the anti-mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, directed by Marco Turco, as well as a number of one-off history documentaries, such as On Assignment for Mussolini (2006), The Rosselli Files (2007) and Michelangelo Revealed (2008). In 2009 after developing and co-writing Nato’s Secret Armies, a documentary about Europe’s post-war “stay-behind” networks, directed by Andreas Pichler and produced by the Milan-based independent MIR Cinematografica, she decided to dedicate herself fulltime to creative documentaries, working as executive producer with Cristiano Barbarossa on his A Slum Symphony (2010), following five children through Venezuela’s national orchestra system, produced by Verve Media Company, among other projects. In 2011 she developed Jannik Spidsboel's documentary film Days in Maremma (Made in Copenhagen/ Denmark) and was executive producer for Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragazzi's award-winning documentary road-movie Italy Love it or Leave it (2012). In 2012 she took part in the training scheme Eurodoc under veteran French producer Jaques Bidou with the project Reinventing Fire, a documentary she went on to co-direct and co-produce with Alessandra Populin and Tailsfilm Production (2014). In 2013 she executive produced the last in Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragazzi's trilogy of films about Italy, What is Left? (2013), and worked as story editor, writing the treatment, for The Troublemaker, Roberto Salinas's documentary shot behind the scenes during Miguel D'Escoto Brockman's year as president of the UN General Assembly (2014). She is currently executive producer for Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragazzi's feature documentary on Europe, in development, and co-producer of Paola Sangiovanni's documentary film A Body Like Mine, for the Udine-based independent Altreforme. She collaborates regularly with Doclab Srl on project development as a writer and story editor.