Born in 1988, Campanian by birth, Roman by adoption. Daniele Santonicola studied Media Communication at University of Salerno and Cinema, Television and Multimedial Production at DAMS - University of Roma Tre, where he graduated in 2012 with a thesis about "the making-of in the history of cinema".
From 2002 to 2007 he takes part to the Giffoni Experience jury, the most important movie festival for youg people (where he also worked in video production), in 2004 he is selected in a movies workshop in Athens and, in 2005, in the jury of Giffoni-Hollywood, chaired by Academy Award winner John Voight.
In 2007 he participates in the tv-show "Corto in Progress", directing the one-minute short film "Rewind", which wins the award for Best Director at the Capri Art Film Festival.
During the same year, at the Venice Film Festival, he is among the participants in the tv-show "The Venetian apartment", broadcast on Coming Soon Television.
Since 2006 he directs several movies workshops for high school students, making many short films which win awards around the world.
In 2010 the independent commercial "Meet again through History", shot with his friend and colleague Giovanni D'Amaro, wins the first award in the regional competition "A video commercial for Pompeii" and it's showed in important international tourism fairs such as London, New York and Tokyo.
Since 2010 he connects his job as director to the passion for behind the scenes and he is called to realize behind the scenes for movies, tv series, commercials and music videos.
In 2017 he wins the "Best Italian Behind The Scenes Award" for Stefano Sollima's "Suburra - The movie" and in 2021 he wins the same award for Claudio Noce's "PadreNostro" making-of and Pierfrancesco Favino's "Diaries from Hammamet" making-of.
His working experience includes behind the scenes for important Italian production companies, such as Netflix, Amazon, Cattleya, Lucky Red, Wildside, Groenlandia, Bibi Film, Think Cattleya and for directors such as Matteo Rovere, Stefano Sollima, Matteo Garrone, Ferzan Ozpetek, Michele Placido, Gabriele Muccino, Ivan Cotroneo, Marco Risi, Andrea Molaioli, Stasi e Fontana.
