Filippo Ascione (1954–2026) was an Italian director, screenwriter, producer, and assistant director, and a key figure in contemporary Italian cinema. Born in Cariati, Calabria, he built his career largely working “behind the scenes” of auteur cinema. In the 1980s he worked as assistant director to Federico Fellini, also taking part in the production of Ginger e Fred. As a screenwriter, he signed numerous critically acclaimed and successful films, including La stazione (David di Donatello Award for Best Screenplay) and Al lupo al lupo (Nastro d’Argento Award for Best Original Story), also collaborating with directors such as Carlo Verdone, Sergio Rubini, and Christian De Sica. Throughout his career, he also held roles in production and development within the Italian film industry, contributing to numerous projects between the 1980s and 2000s, while always maintaining a strong connection to Italian auteur cinema. In his final years, he devoted himself entirely to the film Baracoa, together with producer Francesco Papa and Cuban director Luis Ernesto Doñas. Starring Giancarlo Giannini and entirely set in Cuba, the film carries many autobiographical elements from Ascione’s own life. Perhaps it is no coincidence that his final cinematic vision brings together the two distant yet intimately connected poles of his sensibility—Cuba and Calabria—places far apart yet deeply intertwined in his imagination, as if his cinema had always sought a single horizon of sea and roots, leaving a mark that continues to live on in the gaze of those who encounter it.