Andrea Farri

Andrea began his work on Those About to Die just after his success scoring the film lo Capitano, directed by Matteo Garrone; the film tells the story of two Senegalese men who travel across Africa and the Mediterranean in an effort to reach Europe, earning accolades and global headlines due to its exploration of the hot-button issue of illegal migration in Europe. The film was nominated for Best International Feature Film at  the 96th Academy Awards (Oscar) and Best Motion Picture - Non-English Language at the 2024 Golden Globes. At the Venice Film Festival, Andrea earned a Soundtrack Stars Award for Best Soundtrack. The film’s other achievements at the event were Best Director (Leone D’Argento) to Matteo Garrone and the Silver Lion Award for Best Young Actor to the film’s star Seydou Sarr.

Though he has made a name for himself in Italian cinema scoring nearly 70 films, his work on Those About to Die recalls his early works as a composer for 45 episodes of the TV series Squadra antimafia – Palermo oggi (Mafia Squad), at one time the most popular show in Italy, which he began scoring after working on the film Un gioco da ragazze (A Game For Girls) in 2008.

In 2013, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica named Andrea one of the top Italian composers, a designation he continued to live up to during the 2010s, winning the Italian Golden Globe for Best Original Score in 2015 for Cristina Comencini’s Latin Lover; receiving two David di Donatello nominations for Best Original Score and Best Original Song in 2017 for Matteo Rovere’s Italian Race; and in 2019 receiving Nastri d’Argento and David di Donatello nominations for his score to Matteo Rovere’s The First King: Birth of an Empire (Il Primo Re). His credits in the 2020s include creating and producing the music for the Matteo Garrone's short Le Château du Tarot, produced by Dior for the Dior Spring Summer 2021 Haute Couture Collection; and the films Security (2021) by Peter Chelsom, The Hanging Sun (2022) by Francesco Carrozzini and, earlier in 2024, the teen romance The Tearsmith, (aka Il Fabbricante di Lacrime) Italy’s first #1 on Netflix Global Non-English Film chart, reaching the pole position only three days after its April release.

The son of Italian composer, producer, arranger and drummer Pier Farri and Italian actress, playwright and stage director Lucia Poli, Andrea was born in Rome but spent his early childhood touring around with his mother and living in Venice and Florence for a part of every year. He went to school later than most children his age, enrolling in a Spanish school in Rome. Film-wise, one of his greatest influences was his uncle, Italian theatre, TV and film actor Paolo Poli, a major intellectual figure who introduced Andrea to cinema via the classic films of Ernst Lubitsch, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, John Ford, Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini.

by Jonathan Widran