Darianna Cardilli

Darianna Cardilli was born in Africa from Italian parents. Growing up in the Middle East, she acquired a taste for the colorful and exotic at an early age. Educated in Switzerland and England, she went on to study Economics at Cambridge University, graduating with BA Hons. in 1991. After working as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs in London, New York and Hong Kong, she left a lucrative financial career in order to pursue her love of film-making.

Her directorial debut, Midnight Market, won the Audience Award at the USC School of Film & Television Summer Workshop and earned her a place at the American Film Institute. She graduated from AFI in 1998 with an MFA in Film Editing, where she edited James Brett’s award-winning thesis film Deadtime.

Working in Los Angeles as a feature and documentary film-maker, her editing credits to date include:

• AMC’s Hollywood Fashion Machine Series, for which she cut Hitchcock and the Fashions of Fear, Studio Style Wars and Hollywood 101.
• Features Hollywood 5, Hammerlock and Frozen Stars
• Real Life Private Investigators, an investigative series on cases pursued by investigators across the US
• Tweaked, Geeked and Freaked: on the road with The Crystal Method
• Tribute to Ang Lee for the 2001 AFI Film Festival

Her latest directorial effort, the documentary short It Takes Two, won the coveted Dewar’s Sponsor Award at the Spyworm TV Competition and played at the Milan Film Festival. She is currently at work on another documentary on female vanity.

Every January she is an official interpreter for the Sundance Film Festival, translating for Italian, French and Spanish directors. When not in front of an editing system, her hobbies include figurative and plein-air painting, tango and scuba diving.