For film professor Antonio Tibaldi, the act of creation isn’t always exciting.
“It’s really fun to make a movie, but you have to suffer a lot to get to make them,” the Italian-Australian filmmaker said.
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awards highly competitive fellowships to individuals pursuing research and creative work in 50 different fields across the arts, humanities, and sciences. Tibaldi was one of the 2025 198 Guggenheim Fellows. About 3,500 candidates applied, and it is common for candidates to apply multiple times. Tibaldi got it on his first try, calling it “a total fluke.”
“I was really stunned…I feel like I got it out of pure luck,” Tibaldi said.
He was made aware of the opportunity after a colleague asked him to write a letter of recommendation for their application, but ended up throwing his hat in the ring.
The Fellowship has previously been awarded to notable creatives such as James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, and John Cage.
He is using the grant to fund his documentary “Fuori (Freedom),” which follows a father and son who’ve been imprisoned for over 20 years for multiple robberies. Tibaldi first encountered the two while filming the award winning “Gorgona,” which centers on a remote prison island that teaches its incarcerated trade and farming skills to reintegrate into society.
“Gorgona is an interesting prison, because the inmates are free during the day, you know, they get out of their cells, and they work the land. They work with animals, they repair roads, they fix electrical problems, hydraulic problems. The jobs that they do are not just to occupy their time and earn a few pennies. It’s essential, necessary work that gives them a purpose.”
Tibaldi’s filmmaking style is nonconfrontational, relying on the environment and his subjects’ actions to drive the narrative.
‘I don’t really do many interviews,” Tibaldi said. “I just observe people with my camera, and they’re wondering, ‘why is this guy coming all the way from New York and he’s watching me with a camera for three hours milking a cow, why is it so interesting?’”
When the camera is rolling, Tibaldi is not focused on getting his subject to talk or provide b-roll. Instead, he seeks what lies in-between. It’s the unspoken, subtle occurrences that reveal truth that he finds most valuable. Tibaldi notes that while he does not interfere with his subject’s actions, filming requires great effort.
“It’s hard work. You know, they’re sweating and I’m sweating. So there’s something reciprocal, where we’re all working… People start talking to you, and I never talk back, and then at some time I’ll stop recording.”
Photo credit: Gill Fickling (UNTV)
Filming will wrap by mid-2027, about a year after both subjects will have completed their sentences. He wants to capture their transition back to civilian life.
While “Freedom” has yet to be completed, Tibaldi is already thinking about his next project. He plans to shoot a documentary about aquarium workers and marine biologists with an iPhone. This minimal setup has invited more spontaneity and ease in his craft.
“I can just start, I have an idea, I inquire, and I can start filming– something that could never be done 20 years ago,” he said. “You’d need to go in with a 16 millimeter [camera], very expensive, and get a lot of funding prior to even knowing if you want to do it. Everything has changed.”
As a graduate student, he attended the prestigious California Institute of the Arts as a Fulbright scholar. Since 2004, he has been a consultant for the United Nations, videographing underreported realities in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Last year, he was also the recipient of the Stuart Z. Katz Professorship in Humanities & the Arts. The endowment supports one outstanding professor in the humanities during the academic year and provides $10,000 to support research and creative activity, which Tibaldi is also using for “Freedom.”
Mia Euceda is an alumna of Baruch College, where they studied journalism and served as an editor for The Ticker newspaper and Refract Magazine. Their work has been published in The New York Review of Books and Treble Zine.