Background and career
Tao dei Principi Ruspoli ( RUU-spoh-lee; born 7 November 1975) is an Italian-American filmmaker. He is known for the documentary features Being in the World (2010) and Monogamish (2017), and as a co-founder of the Bombay Beach Biennale in California's Salton Sea region.
Ruspoli was born in Bangkok, Thailand, on 7 November 1975, and raised in Rome and Los Angeles. He is the second son of Alessandro Ruspoli, 9th Prince of Cerveteri (known as "Dado"), an aristocrat and occasional actor, and the Austrian-American actress Debra Berger. The family's ancestral seat is the Castello Ruspoli at Vignanello in Lazio. He graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1993 and received a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley in 1998. At Berkeley he studied with Hubert Dreyfus, whose interpretation of Martin Heidegger later shaped his documentary work. In May 2024, Ruspoli delivered the commencement address to the University of California, Berkeley philosophy department's graduating class.
In 2000, Ruspoli founded the Los Angeles Filmmakers Cooperative (LAFCO), a collective of filmmakers and musicians based in a converted school bus in Venice, California. Through LAFCO he directed several documentary shorts and features. Just Say Know (2002) addresses three generations of his family's experience with addiction. This Film Needs No Title: A Portrait of Raymond Smullyan (2004) profiles the mathematician and logician Raymond Smullyan. El Cable (2004) and Behind the Wheel (2008) document subcultural communities. Flamenco: A Personal Journey (2005) follows Ruspoli's study of flamenco guitar with Gitanos musicians in southern Spain and accompanied his album of the same name on Mapleshade Records. LAFCO also produced the narrative feature Camjackers (2006), on which Ruspoli was credited as co-editor, actor, and executive producer; the film won the editing award at the 44th Ann Arbor Film Festival.
Ruspoli's narrative debut, Fix (2008), premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival and won the Heineken Red Star Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. At the Brooklyn International Film Festival it received the Grand Chameleon Award, Best Narrative Feature, and Best Actor; it also won Best Film at the Vail Film Festival and the Twin Rivers Media Festival. Reviews were mixed: Variety called it "breezy, brash" but uneven, while The New York Times described its visual approach as energetic if undisciplined. Being in the World (2010) is a documentary about Heidegger's concept of being-in-the-world, especially as it is understood in the Dreyfusian tradition. It interweaves interviews with philosophers — including Dreyfus, Mark Wrathall, Sean Kelly, Taylor Carman, John Haugeland, Iain Thomson, Charles Taylor, and Albert Borgmann — with portraits of master practitioners such as the chef Leah Chase, the Japanese carpenter Hiroshi Sakaguchi, the flamenco guitarist Manuel Molina, and the jazz pianist Austin Peralta. The portraits of the practitioners exemplify the philosophical concepts. The film received the Audience Award for Documentary Feature at the Brooklyn International Film Festival and a favorable review in Spirituality & Practice. Between 2012 and 2014, Ruspoli was a producer on Dying to Know: Ram Dass & Timothy Leary, directed by Gay Dillingham and narrated by Robert Redford. The documentary screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival and received a limited U.S. theatrical release in 2015; The Hollywood Reporter described it as "both informative and moving". Monogamish (2017), a documentary on contemporary attitudes to monogamy and alternative relationship structures, was co-written with philosopher Mark Wrathall. It includes interviews with the columnist Dan Savage, the psychotherapist Esther Perel, the evolutionary psychologist Christopher Ryan, the historian Stephanie Coontz, and the attorney Diana Adams. The film premiered at the Rome Film Festival in 2015 and received a U.S. theatrical release through Abramorama in October 2017. Reviews in IndieWire, Film Inquiry, and Film Threat were favorable. In addition to his films, Ruspoli self-published a photography monograph, Midway on Our Life's Journey, in 2018, gathering twenty years of work. Since 2020 he has hosted the Being in the World podcast on topics such as consciousness, artificial intelligence, mental health, and narrative.
In 2016, Ruspoli co-founded the Bombay Beach Biennale with the hotelier Stefan Ashkenazy and the public-art producer Lily Johnson White. The free, non-commercial event combines site-specific installations, performances, and an academic philosophy conference in the post-industrial landscape of Bombay Beach. The Biennale has produced permanent infrastructure in the town, including an outdoor opera house, a drive-in cinema, and several artist-residency spaces; Ruspoli's contributions include the Bombay Beach Institute of Particle Physics, Metaphysics, and International Relations, an artist-residency compound, and the Bombay Beach Metro installation, co-created with the artist Dave Corcoran. In January 2025, Ruspoli and Dulcinée DeGuere co-founded the Bombay Beach Institute for Industrial Espionage & Post-Apocalyptic Studies, a 501(c)(3) organization for which Ruspoli serves as chairman. The Institute operates as a cultural laboratory and research organization, hosting artist residencies, the annual conference of the American Society for Existential Phenomenology, and public programming across several sites in Bombay Beach.
The Dulcinée Dialectic (2026), a documentary essay film about creativity, artificial intelligence, and bipolar II disorder. It premiered at the American Documentary and Animation Film Festival (AmDocs) in Palm Springs in March 2026, where it received the Special Jury Award for Best Feature Documentary and the award for Best Post Production Sound. Inspired by Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, the film features Mark Wrathall, the neuroscientist Patrick House, the cognitive scientist Aaron Bornstein, the writer Marya Hornbacher, and the musician Emily Wells. At the 2026 Seattle Film Festival, The Dulcinée Dialectic won the Best Director Documentary Film award. It also received a positive review in Film Threat, with critic Bobby LePire giving the film a 9/10 rating and noting its "raw and honest" emotion alongside its integration and exploration of artificial intelligence.
