AustLit

Film/television director, screenwriter, and producer.

Mario Andreacchio attended Flinders University in Adelaide with the initial intention of studying physics, but later switched to psychology. After graduating, he again changed direction, applying for and being accepted to study film directing at the Australian Film and Television School.

Since the mid-1980s, Andreacchio has directed feature films, television specials, telemovies, children's mini-series, and a variety of documentaries.

Among his documentaries are Long Time No See, Ronnie (1983), which tells the dual stories of train robber Ronnie Biggs and Scotland Yard detective Jack Slipper; Al Fresco (1989), the story of a popular Adelaide hang-out; Facing The World (1990), which follows a single patient (a Vietnamese woman badly burnt by napalm in the Vietnam war) at the the Cranio-facial Unit at the Royal Adelaide Hospital; and Vaudeville (1992), in which former vaudeville stars tell the story of the art form's decline in the 1930s while preparing to take the stage with modern vaudevillians.

His best-known television work is perhaps his contribution to the Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF) Touch the Sun anthology, Captain Johnno, which won a 1988 International Emmy Award. His other television credits include episodes of The Flying Doctors (1991) and The New Adventures of Black Beauty (1992), as well as work for several other ACTF productions, including the More Winners anthology series ('Second Childhood'), Lift Off (1992), and Sky Trackers (1994).

His earliest feature film is the horror/thriller Fair Game (1986), written by Rob George, in which a young woman running a wildlife sanctuary in the outback falls prey herself to vicious kangaroo hunters. Other film productions include children's fantasy films Napoleon (1995), The Real Macaw (1998), Sally Marshall is Not an Alien (1998), Elephant Tales (2006), and The Dragon Pearl (2011). Other films include Young Blades (2001), a British-French co-production based on Alexandre Dumas's Three Musketeers, and Paradise Found (2003), which follows Paul Gaugin's pursuit of innovative art in Tahiti.

The founder of the Adelaide Motion Picture Company, based in Norwood (South Australia), Andreacchio is an active member of the film industry and has served on various boards, including Australian Film Finance Corporation and the South Australian Film Corporation. He has also been a long-time member of the Australian Screen Directors Association and the Australian Writers' Guild.