Franco Piavoli (born 21 June 1933) is an Italian film director, screenwriter, and producer.

Piavoli studied law at the University of Pavia in Lombardy.Throughout the 1950s and 1960s he made a number of short films: Uccellanda (1953), Ambulatorio (1954), Incidente (1955), La stagioni (1960), Domenica sera (1962), Emigranti (1963), and Evasi (1964).

Nearly 20 years later, Piavoli released his first feature film The Blue Planet in 1982, which competed at the 39th Venice International Film Festival. Piavoli later directed Nostos: The Return in 1989, a film inspired by Ulysses’ return to Ithica in the Odyssey, and contains only sparse dialogue that imitates “sounds of ancient Mediterranean languages”.

In 2009, Piavoli worked with Ermanno Olmi on Olmi’s documentary about food production Terra Madre.

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