Leonardo Severino (b. 1995)

is an independent filmmaker based in Rome. He graduated from the DAMS – Arts, Music and Performance Studies program at the University of Bologna, covering visual arts, music, performing arts and fashion studies. Subsequently, he expanded his experience in Rome working as an assistant director on various national and international productions, experiences that contributed to shaping his directorial approach. In 2025, he won the Occhi sul Lago competition as part of the International Short Film Festival CortoLovere. In 2026, he took part in the Oberhausen Seminar, an experimental seminar on moving image curation and critical frameworks held within the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, led by Linda Chiu-han Lai. The same year, his video essay LIKE HIM was selected as a Finalist of the 7th D-Normal / V-Essay (Hong Kong), featured in the accompanying VideoZine, and deposited in the Videotage Media Art Collection (VMAC), a permanent archive dedicated to the preservation and research of media art.

Through a poetic and minimalist approach, his films investigate the fragile relationship between lived experience and its traces, focusing on loss, desire, and identity through images, landscapes, and acts of remembrance. His practice moves between fiction and experimental cinema, combining conventional production methods with analog video formats and digital environments including machinima, in an ongoing exploration of the boundaries between cinematic construction and mediated image-making. His short films, both fiction and experimental, have been screened in festivals and exhibitions in Italy, France, Bulgaria, Asia, Russia, Ukraine, the United States and Argentina.