Born in 1958 in Ischia, Italy, Leonardo di Costanzo graduated from the Instituto Universitario Qrientale di Napoli. In 1988 he took a directing course at the Ateliers Varan in Paris, after which he directed several documentaries: Prove di Stato (1999), A scuola (2003), Odessa (2006), Cadenza d'Inganno (2011).

Since 1993 he has been a member of the teaching team at the Ateliers Varan. As part of the Ateliers Varan abroad workshops, he has run documentary workshops in Phnom Penh, Bogota, Belgrade, Tbilisi and Marrakech.

L'Intervallo (2011), his first feature film, was screened in the Orizzonti section at the 69th Venice Film Festival, where it was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize and in 2013 won the David di Donatello for Best New Italian Director. With the short film L'avant-poste, he took part in the collective film The Bridges of Sarajevo with 13 other European directors. The film was presented in a special screening at the 69th Cannes Film Festival in 2016. His last fiction films The intrudor ( 2017) and Ariaferma ( 2021) were selected in Canne’s director’s fortnight, the Mostra, and won several awards at the David di Donatellos.