Gianfranco Annichini

Biography

Gianfranco Annichini Somalvico (Novara, 1941 - Lima, February 12, 2025) was an Italian filmmaker, photographer, editor and screenwriter whose career in Peru spanned more than five decades. He was born in Novara, Italy, in 1939. He grew up in Switzerland, where, at the age of 20, he earned a diploma from the École des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne. He worked in Stockholm until 1961, when he decided to travel to Peru—the country where he would ultimately settle. In Peru, his early work involved drawing and advertising film; he later went on to handle cinematography, photography, or editing for countless documentaries, short films, and feature films. During this time, he collaborated with a wide range of Peruvian filmmakers from various eras and styles, including Armando Robles Godoy, Francisco Lombardi, Chicho Durant, José Antonio Portugal, Augusto Tamayo, and the Vega brothers, among others. Beginning in 1981, he started directing his own documentary projects, most notably “María del desierto” (1981), “Radio Belén” (winner of an award at the Oberhausen Film Festival in 1983), and “Una novia en Nueva York” (which received a special mention at Oberhausen in 1987).