Born in Milan on December 21, 1972, Manlio Gomarasca founded the magazine Nocturno Cinema in 1994, where he serves as publisher and editor-in-chief. He has authored several books, including 99 Donne and Io Emanuelle for Mediaword, and La piccola cineteca degli orrori and Monnezza amore mio for Rizzoli.
He curated the retrospectives Italian King of the B’s and Spaghetti Western for the Venice International Film Festival, and has served on the selection committees of the Rome Film Festival (2013–2016), the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival (NIFFF, 2012–2019), the Locarno Film Festival (2009–present), and the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes (2018–2021).
He also collaborates with major international genre film festivals, including the Sitges Film Festival (Spain), Strasbourg European Fantastic Film Festival (France), Brussels Offscreen Film Festival (Belgium), and SciencePlusFiction in Trieste (Italy).
Since 2015, he has worked in film distribution with Plaion (formerly Koch Media), where he founded and serves as artistic director of the label Midnight Factory. In the home video sector, he has curated collections for leading Italian distributors (CG, Medusa, RaroVideo, and 01) and international ones (Blue Underground, Anchor Bay, Exposure Cinema, Plaion), and created the label Cinekult, dedicated to restoring and promoting Italian genre cinema.
In 2013, he produced the film Il notturno di Chopin directed by Aldo Lado, and directed the documentaries Totally Uncut, Fernando di Leo: la morale del cinema, I Tarantiniani (with Stefano Della Casa), and Inferno rosso – Joe D’Amato sulla via dell’eccesso, which was screened out of competition at the 78th Venice International Film Festival and won Best Documentary at the Sitges Film Festival in 2021.
In 2023, he served as executive producer and screenwriter for the documentary Dario Argento Panico directed by Simone Scafidi.
