Francesco Casetti was born in Trento, on April 2nd 1947. Full Professor at Università Cattolica of Milan, he is also Chair of the Department of Media and Performing Arts. In June 1970 he graduated with a degree in Humanities at the Università Cattolica of Milan and, four years later, he received an Advanced Diploma in Film Studies and Performing Arts at the School of Communication of the Università Cattolica. His academic career began at the Università di Genova, at the School of Education, where from 1974 to 1980 he worked as an assistant professor for the Film History courses. During these years he maintained an ongoing collaboration with the School of Communication of Università Cattolica of Milan.

In 1979 he began teaching for the College of Humanities of the Università Cattolica of Milan, at first as an adjunct professor, and then as an associate professor. In 1994 he was appointed a full professor at the Università di Trieste, where he taught History of Cinema in the Humanities College. In 1997 he returned to the Università Cattolica, as Professor in Filmology in the College of Humanities.

He has been Vice Provost of Università Cattolica form 1998 to 2002. He taught as professeur associé at Université de Paris III - la Sorbonne Nouvelle and as visiting professor at the University of Iowa (Dept. of Communication Studies). He taught the "chair of Italian Culture" at the University of California - Berkeley. He taught as visiting professor at the Yale University (Dept. of Comparative Literature and Dept. of Italian). He is member of the Editorial Board of «Comunicazioni Sociali» (Università Cattolica of Milan), «Iris» (Université de Paris III - la Sorbonne Nouvelle and University of Iowa), «Cinema&Cie» (Università di Udine- Université del Paris III) and other reviews.

He is General Editor of the series "Spettacolo e comunicazione" for the publishing house Bompiani, Milan. As a well known scholar of Film and Media Studies, Francesco Casetti has been appointed to numerous and important positions. He is a member of several Scientific Committees; among them CISF (International Center of Family Studies, Milan), Institute "Gemelli- Musatti" (Milan) and of Centro Sperimentale di cinematografia (Rome). He has been vice-president of Associazione Italiana di Studi Semiotici (1977-81), member of presidential board of Italian Cinema Departments (1990-98) and president of CUC, the Italian society for cinema and television studies (1998-2002 and 2006-present). He is member of the ancient "Accademia degli Agiati" (Rovereto), since 2001.