top of page

"My Time with Wolves is an ongoing documentary that tells the story of a young man that lives and breathes wolves, on the quest of writing his book made of wild stories and fine art prints."

Mattia Cialoni and Gianluca Damiani
Wolf family

After completing My Neighbour is a Bear in January 2022 and graduating with Merit from the Master of Arts in Wildlife Filmmaking at the University of the West of England in Bristol, I immediately began brainstorming my next project. Bears and wolves are the animals that inspired my journey into wildlife photography, and after making a film about the rarest bear on Earth, I instinctively found myself drawn to the trail of wolves.

Growing up, I spent countless hours reading books and dreaming about these majestic creatures. I thought my time with bears had come to an end, and I felt the need for a new adrenaline rush—my time with wolves had arrived.

I took some time to let ideas develop, searching for the right story and the right characters. That's when I met Gianluca.

In February 2022, I traveled to Italy for a recce and spent time with Gianluca in the heart of the Italian Apennines, searching for wolves. Just hours into our hunt, I realized that I had stumbled upon an incredible conservation story filled with thrilling action and an abundance of wolf sequences.

By summer 2022, I had written the film, structuring it into different chapters to be shot across various parts of Italy, following different wolf families at different times of the year. Gianluca’s journey begins in Rome, charting the comeback of wolves since they were protected by law in the 1970s. From the Apennines to the Alps, he follows the wolves through rivers, fields, hills, and beaches. I started filming the first chapter, Winter, in February-March 2023, and soon after launched a crowdfunding campaign to help fund the project.

Filming in multiple locations throughout Italy over the past 24 months has been a challenging endeavor. I had to adapt to Gianluca’s rhythms, often spending nights in the same places he did in order to track wolves across the country. This meant sleeping in cars, abandoned buildings, mountains, forests, and caves—strategies that helped keep production costs down (though not so much my back and knees!). With 12 more months of production ahead, I’m working to capture more footage from additional regions of Italy, hire a composer to score the 52-minute film, as well as an editor, animator, and sound designer, and license archive footage.

Making a film, especially a long-term project like this one, is an expensive undertaking. That’s where your support becomes invaluable in helping me complete this journey.

For more details and to contribute, please visit the crowdfunding link:

Mattia Cialoni and gianluca Damiani
Wolf in the snow
  • Facebook
  • Instagram

@ Copyright Mattia Cialoni / www.mattiacialoni.com / mattia.cialoni@gmail.com

bottom of page