Anna Maria Cianciulli pushes the boundaries of filmmaking as an actress, director, writer and artist. Her acclaimed performance as Queen Gertrude of Denmark in Hamlet/Horatio, a feature film adaptation, was released theatrically in the summer of 2021 and is now streaming on all the major film platforms. The film has received Best Film awards at Los Angeles Film Awards, New York Cinematography Awards and Southeast Regional Film Festival; and Best Experimental Film at the Rome Independent Prisma Awards. As an actress, she has been featured in several colorful roles, which include Filomena Bene in Lifetime Network’s Stealing Chanel; Sara in Change the World; and Lynne in Maladaptive Behavior.

As director, her award-winning short, 33 Breaths, was shot entirely in one take and was a Single-Take Challenge finalist in 2020. Stay, which she wrote and directed, takes place in a New York City apartment comprised of a cultural diverse family of strangers, and was included in the Official Selection of Manhattan, Central Florida, and NewFilmmakers New York film festivals, and complement her other films The War in Heaven; and Bedtime. She also co-wrote Life After Her, which won the Platinum Award at the NYC Indie Film Awards in 2017, and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actress in a Lead Role in the same year.

Anna’s work as a live performance and multimedia artist is vast, and consists of several installations and exhibitions such as Fashion Independence at Vanderbilt Hall; and Sa Coia, which combined dance, theatre and video projection and takes place in the island of Sardinia in 1945. As Creative Director at BdA, she has collaborated with Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, Michael and Kevin Bacon.

As an acting professor, she has immersed her students in the Sanford Meisner technique, of which she has developed significant expertise; in fact, Mr. Meisner assigned her the rights to bring forth his seminal book, On Acting, in an Italian edition. She worked with Tony Danza in his rehearsals for the Joseph Gordon-Leavitt film, Don Jon. She is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Film at Columbia University. In our conversation, we discuss the Italian experience in the wave of the Pandemic; her journey to film in New York City; the process of working with Sanford Meisner and developing a unique understanding of the process of acting; and the mindset behind her several films as an actress and filmmaker.

Opening Credits: Ketsa - 15 Waiting-Room; 1st Contact - Unbiased View; Closing Credits: HoliznaCC0 - 4 (jazz)