Stefan Balugani (director)
Stefan Balugani (26 August 2004) is an Italian video editor, writer and director[1]. He is known for directing Balto IV: Wolf Destiny, the last film of Balto's cinematic franchise started with Balto (1995) and continued with Balto II: Wolf Quest (2002), and Balto III: Wings of Change (2004).
Balugani has always been a big fan of James Horner, the composer known for Titanic (1997), Avatar (2009), Balto (1995), and Bravehart (1995), to whom he has dedicated many videos on YouTube,[2]
Life[edit]
Early life[edit]
Stefan Baluganni was born in Nitra, Slovakia, on November 17, 2004. He's been adopted by Elena Bertolini and Alessandro Balugani. His father and mother are both doctors. He grew up in Montale Rangone, Italy. He attended the Muratori San Carlo linguistic high school in Modena. He still plays the piano, after having studied for a few years at the music school Il Flauto Magico, in Castelnuovo Rangone, but then he left his studies and continued as a self-taught musician.
2020-2022[edit]
In January 2020, Stefan posted an announcement on Facebook saying that he wanted to make a fourth Balto movie to conclude the franchise. Thus begins the pre-production of the film Balto IV: Wolf Destiny, based on the homonymous book, which sees a lot of controversies during the making. Among these problems is pre-production, which lasts until 2022. From 2020 to 2021 Balugani works on the film's screenplay, finds actors for the film, including the YouTuber with the stage name of The Mac Attack who voices Balto, and finally looks for animators for the film. Because of this difficulty, Stefan Balugani decides to split the film into two parts and postpone the release of the first part to 2024, and therefore release the second part in 2025.
In 2020 Stefan publishes on his YouTube channel Horner (2021), a documentary in memory of Oscar-winning composer James Horner. And in 2021, on the 7th anniversary of Horner's death which took place in 2015, he publishes The Composer Who Moved The World, another documentary on the composer's career.
Controversies[edit]
In 2021 Stefan Balugani published a book entitled The Words of James Horner. However, the book arouses polemics from some of the composer's fans, saying "the whole book has plagiarized files already existing on the internet". Because of this Stefan is forced to withdraw the book after less than a week from its publication.
