Sergio Basso is a screenwriter and director working in film, theatre and television.
He holds diplomas in Directing from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and from GITIS in Moscow, where he studied with Jurij Alschitz. He has been the director of the Teatraz theatre company since 2001 and has taught at academies and universities around the world, from ENSATT to FAMU in Prague. He has lived in China on and off since 1996.
In film, he directed “Amori elementari” (2014, together with the novel of the same name published by Salani), “Dimmi chi sono” (2020), a Bollywood-style musical shot in a refugee camp in Nepal, and “Cercando Itaca” (2025). He was part of the writing team of the video game “Aftermath” (101 Percento, PlayStation 4) and is one of the winners of the 2009 Premio Solinas. In 2024 he wrote and directed three episodes on Mao Zedong for ArteTV, which achieved a 10.40% prime-time share. For Chinese state television he directed several prime-time documentaries.
His documentaries, awarded at Locarno, Annecy and Nyon, and his scripts for RAI (“Marta&Eva”, “POV”) go alongside collaborations with the UN, Save the Children, MAXXI and the University of Oxford. In 2016 he won the China Award for a documentary on the Long March.
He is a Rizzoli author, having published a biography of Mao Zedong, now in its second edition. He writes regularly for Il Corriere della Sera and is International Consultant in Communication Strategy for the OSCE.
