Giuliano Montaldo, the prolific Italian director, actor and film industry executive, whose works comprise powerful political drama “Sacco and Vanzetti” about the Massachusetts trial and execution in 1927 of accused Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, has died at his home in Rome. He was 93.

His death was announced Wednesday by his family and reported by multiple Italian media outlets. No cause of death was revealed. Born in 1930 in Genoa, Montaldo at age 14 he was rounded up by the Nazis and sent to forced labour in the trenches of the southern Italian front. After a bombing he was able to escape and join the communist resistance.