Stefano Bessoni, Golden Romics of the 37th edition

Director, illustrator, and master of stop-motion, author of a visionary imagination suspended between fairy tale, science, and wonder, awarded the Romics d'Oro.

Stefano Bessoni, one of the most original and multifaceted contemporary Italian authors, will be celebrated with the awarding of the Romics d'Oro during the 37th edition of Romics, scheduled from ’1 to 4 October 2026 at Fiera Roma.

A film director, illustrator, and animator who graduated from the Academy of  Fine Arts in Rome, Bessoni has constructed a unique poetics, inspired by the concept of wunderkammer and fueled by an imagery that intertwines anatomy, entomology, fairy tales, and the history of science. After his debut in experimental cinema and his collaboration with Pupi Avati as a concept artist and storyboard artist, he directed the feature films Fragments of Inexact Sciences, Imago Mortis and Krokodyle, works that established his visionary style in the international fantasy cinema scene.

In recent years he has combined cinema with an intense publishing and artistic activity, publishing books that have become true reference points for Italian illustration such as Alice sotto terra, Wunderkammer, Homunculus, Pinocchio, the illustrated biographies dedicated to Peter Greenaway and Tim Burton and the recent He Read Deep Into The Night, created in collaboration with Greenaway himself. At the same time, he explored the language of stop-motion animation, of which he is today one of the most authoritative Italian artists and popularizers.

His career was celebrated by the National Cinema Museum in Turin with his major solo exhibition La Mole delle Meraviglie and with his collaboration on the exhibition The World of Tim Burton, and in 2024 the Cartoons on the Bay festival dedicated the exhibition Stop-motion and other inexact sciences to him. Coordinator of the three-year Illustration and Animation Course at the IED in Rome, during the 37th edition of Romics, he will be the protagonist of a meeting with the public dedicated to the atmosphere and the most intimate dimension of his creative process and of an exhibition dedicated to the relationship between Cinema, Literature and Fantasy in his extraordinary multi-year work.