The architecture of dread

Riccardo Suriano makes films about the space between what we see and what we believe. His work lives in the fracture, where memory becomes hallucination, where the familiar turns hostile, and where the mind, left alone, begins to rewrite its own history.

Born in Rome and formed by the patient, unflinching gaze of European cinema, Suriano moved to California two decades ago to push genre filmmaking into territory it rarely visits: emotion as architecture, horror as intimacy. Across five short films, he has built a body of work that is visually severe, atmospherically relentless, and emotionally uncompromising. Stories that do not comfort, but instead sit with you, quietly, long after the screen goes dark.

His films have screened internationally, recognized for their command of mood, their formal precision, and their refusal to look away from the parts of ourselves we prefer to leave unexamined. For two years he returned to Italy to serve as First Assistant Director to Maestro Pupi Avati across three feature films. An apprenticeship in restraint, timing, and the slow art of character.

Now back in California, Suriano has made his first feature film "HOLLOWED" a work that distills two continents, two decades, and one sustained obsession into something singular.