Giovanni Costa Massa

Giovanni Costa Massa was born in 1993 in Itabuna, Bahia, Brazil, but spent the first years of his life in Ilheus, Bahia in a creative, supportive Brazilian-Italian family. He was raised surrounded by the naturally preserved beach on the coast of Bahia, which provided him the inspiration and passion for the environmental cause. Massa earned a B.S. degree in film and audiovisual in 2015 at the Federal University of Pelotas's Arts Center, Brazil. During this time, he filmed several personal trips that later on was transformed into The StoryTraveller, his debut feature film as a director. This project expanded from a graduation project to finish his University degree, and the idea emerged as Massa had the desire to make a nature wild-life type of documentary for a while. He then went on a trip to Laguna, Brazil with friends and started to develop what later would become a much bigger project for a feature-length documentary which took him years to get it done. Massa is extremely involved in the research aspect of the projects he wants to direct and very passionate about the story development, his stepfather Attilio Severgnini, who worked with art and graphics for several years in Italy, encouraged Giovanni on his creative endeavors from a very young age. His father, Luigi Massa, is an Italian immigrant working on the hospitality business, and his mother, Regina Costa, a travel agent, and business owner. Giovanni, however, was raised by a big Brazilian family, with a strong presence of his relatives and godparents Vera Lucia Andrade and Nilton Costa. In 2016, Giovanni Massa went for the first time to New York where he attended the Tribeca Film Festival and engaged in a filmmaking workshop at the New York Film Academy. Then in 2018, he moved to California where he concluded another degree in film and television at the Orange Coast College, which led him to do several marketing videos for an international language school, work on post-production and sales for a distribution company in West Hollywood, film for a Brazilian show on Woohoo a Brazilian cable television channel, develop a couple of independent documentaries as well, and several other video and film work. Giovanni Massa resides in Los Angeles, CA.