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Diego Pascal Panarello was born on 29 May 1978 in Augusta, Sicily. At the age of 16, he travelled to Turin to see a Pink Floyd concert - and decided not to return to Sicily for a while. For about a year Panarello travelled through Europe on his own. After finishing school, he studied Drama, Art and Music Studies (DAMS) at the University of Bologna. In 1999 he was one of the founders of "Psycho Freak Explosion", a collective of underground artists and filmmakers.
Panarello was also an editor and worked in Milan as an author and director for various TV stations and production companies (including Mediaset, Sky, Sony Entertainment). As a member of the artist collective Mantramare, he produced the audiovisual performance "Kaleidos". He also participated in the work of the renowned artist collective "Alterazioni Video" (of which he is not a member). Over the years, Panarello has made several short films, some of which have been shown at international festivals (and can now be seen on his Youtube channel).
Finally he travelled again through Europe, this time as a musician, but returned to Sicily in 2015. There, a Jew's Harp, the traditional Sicilian musical instrument, inspired him to make his first feature-length documentary: For "Der seltsame Klang des Glücks" ("The Strange Sound of Happiness", DE/IT/RU/FR), Panarello explored the origins and meaning of the peculiar instrument. The film premiered at the Festival DOK Leipzig 2017 in the Next Masters Competition and received a special mention from the jury. A good year later, in autumn 2019, "Der seltsame Klang des Glücks" was released in German cinemas.