Amelio is an Italian screenwriter and director. He has been interested in film since early childhood. He dropped out of his philosophy studies in Sicily and moved to Rome where he worked as Vittorio de Sete’s assistant. Later in Spain, he worked on “spaghetti” westerns. He directed two short films before making his feature film debut La fine del gioco (1970). Afterwards he made The Cinema According to Bertolucci (Bertolucci secondo il cinema, 1975), a documentary about Bernardo Bertolucci’s film Novecento, and the feature films Blow to the Heart (Colpire al cuore, 1982), The Way We Laughed (Cosí ridevano, 1998), Open Doors (Porte aperte, 1990), The Stolen Children (Il ladro di bambini, 1992), The House Keys (Le chiavi di casa, 2004) and La stella che non c\'č (2006).