Daphne Di Cinto is an Afro-Italian screenwriter, director, and actor born in Northern Italy. She started her film and theatre studies in Rome, where she focused on acting at Scuola di Cinema while getting her degree in Communication Science at Roma Tre University. She attended the faculty of cinema at Sorbonne University in Paris before moving to New York for her Master’s in Fine Arts at the Actors Studio Drama School. Daphne has developed feature films and TV series in various genres, from comedy to sci-fi. She was a finalist of both Screencraft Film Fund Spring 2021 and the Phil Fox Award for Playwriting 2020 and a quarterfinalist of the Emerging Screenwriters Genre Screenplay Competition. She has worked on scripts and artistic direction for various commercial concept proposals for brands such as Nespresso, San Pellegrino, and Barilla.
While developing a series based on the life of Alessandro de’ Medici, Daphne has written, directed, and produced the short film Il Moro-The Moor, her directorial debut.
Daphne played the Duchess of Hasting in the Netflix series Bridgerton.
She divides her time between England and Italy.
Source: WGM Atlantic
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Listen to our conversation with Daphne for Black History Month on the podcast.
Story of forgotten black Medici ruler is told in new short film
Source: The Guardian
Daphne Di Cinto’s period drama Il Moro focuses on the son of a servant who became the Duke of Florence
![Alberto Boubakar Malanchino, who plays Alessandro de’ Medici, and Daphne Di Cinto on set of Il Moro.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/8197cc60d2c01d555183f204baf19c456926351e/0_298_6000_3600/master/6000.jpg?width=465&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none)
When, on a hot day in July 1510, in the halls of a noble Florentine palace, a servant gave birth to a boy, no one ever would have imagined that the child would become Duke of Florence and heir to the Medicis, one of the most powerful Renaissance dynasties. Even more so as the boy was black.
Five hundred years on, Daphne Di Cinto, the African-Italian actor, writer, and director, who appeared in the Netflix TV series Bridgerton as the Duke of Hastings’s young mother, is seeking to bring his story back to life and has launched the trailer for her debut short film, Il Moro, a period drama set during Italy’s Renaissance and based on the life of Alessandro de’ Medici, the first black head of state in modern western Europe.
Read the full story at The Guardian.
Read more about Daphne in Italian.
Follow her on Instagram.