Marco De Luca is an Italian director and screenwriter living in the UK. After attending a filmmaking course at the Danish film school in Ebeltoft, De Luca explored different aspects of the visual arts through painting and photography. In 2019 he directed his latest feature film: “Beneath the Trees”. A thriller/horror selected at over 12 international festivals and now distributed on Amazon Prime in the UK and the US as well as in Switzerland, Germany, Austria and France. “Beneath the Trees” has been called a Victorian Gothic film, and it is entirely set in the forests of southern England. His last two Queer short films titled “This is You” and “Forever”, have been selected for many international festivals including the prestigious BFI FLARE Film Festival and OUTfest. The previous short, “Two Metres Apart” won the special jury prize of the American streaming platform Dekkoo in May 2020. With the money from the prize, he then directed a short film entirely shot with the back projections technique entitled JACKPLOT, also on Amazon Prime. His directorial debut, dates back to 2010 with "I Think of a Dream like That", an independent black and white thriller/melodrama, selected in the official competition at the Philadelphia International Film Festival, Trieste Maremetraggio Film Festival where it won the "Premio Coraggio” award and at the Los Angeles Italian Film Festival. Marco lives in London where he directs documentaries for major television channels.

While the dialogues in “Buio come il Cuore”, are directly inspired by the great Noir films of the past, the narration creates the emotion and restlessness of a modern thriller. The originality of the project consists in translating a genre made famous by the American cinema of the 40s and 50s into a current Italian setting, strongly influenced by the Giallos. The cinematography evokes the atmosphere of tension and claustrophobia that imprisons the characters resorting to expressionistic cuts of light and shadows. The brutal cynicism of this world is observed without ever judging the ambiguous actions of the protagonists. A sort of pietas towards human weaknesses and frailties. Victims of an ambition that moves their actions, the characters arrive at making despicable gestures, which continually overturn their role as victims and perpetrators. The presence of two Italian acting legends of the past like Luc Merenda and Stefania Casini makes "Buio Come il Cuore" even more a nostalgic tribute to a past era of Italian filmmaking. Buio is written by Marco De Luca together with one of Italy's most famous film critics, Claudio Masenza. His work, in both Tv and through his articles, has been very popular in Italy. All the elements mentioned so far contribute to creating a work of visual elegance, exciting and full of eroticism and suspense.