PUPI AVATI WILL BE THE STAR OF THE OPENING CEREMONY OF THE 41ST TORINO FILM FESTIVAL AT REGGIA DI VENARIA AND LIVE ON RAI RADIO 3

CHRISTIAN PETZOLD’S AFIRE WILL BE AMONG THE ITALIAN PREVIEWS

The exceptional star of the opening ceremony of the 41st Torino Film Festival will be one of the great masters of Italian cinema, Pupi Avati: director, producer, screenwriter and great storyteller.

During the course of the event – hosted by Steve Della Casa, director of the 41st Torino Film Festival and longstanding voice of Hollywood Party – a number of personalities from the world of cinema and entertainment who shared important moments of their human and artistic journey with Pupi Avati will take the stage to pay tribute to him: Micaela Ramazzotti, Neri Marcorè, Lodo Guenzi.

Patroness of TFF’s opening ceremony will be actress and former model Catrinel Marlon.

Following the success of the previous edition, the opening ceremony of the 41st Torino Film Festival will again be broadcast live on Rai Radio 3 as part of the Hollywood Party program starting at 19.00.

The setting for the opening night, which is part of the festival's collaboration with RAI - TFF's Main Media Partner for years -, will be the prestigious Reggia di Venaria.

Following the opening, TFF's first Out-of-Competition film, A Difficult Year, the irresistible new comedy by Intouchables directors Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, starring Pio Marmaï, Jonathan Cohen and Noémie Merlant, will be presented on Saturday, November 25th. 

The 41st Torino Film Festival is also pleased to announce the Out of Competition Italian premiere of Christian Petzold's Afire, in the presence of the director. Set during a scorching summer in an isolated house in a forest on the shores of the Baltic Sea, the film recounts the vacation of a group of friends that gradually turns into a nightmare due to a huge forest fire. The film, Silver Bear at the last Berlin Film Festival, will be in theaters with Wanted from November 30th.

The activities of the 41st Torino Film Festival will also include a retrospective dedicated to Sergio Citti, on the occasion of the ninetieth year since his birth, realized in collaboration with the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia – Cineteca Nazionale. Collaborator of Pasolini and unique director in the Italian scene, Sergio Citti will be paid homage by TFF through the first ever retrospective entirely dedicated to him, in which all the films that he directed for cinema and all his TV works will be shown: from Ostia to Fratella e Sorello, also including the TV series Sogni e bisogni. Each screening will be presented by one or more guests among film historians, performers and collaborators of Sergio Citti.

On the occasion of the retrospective, curated by Stefano Boni, Grazia Paganelli, Matteo Pollone and Caterina Taricano, a volume edited by the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia – Cineteca Nazionale will be published. It will also be curated by Matteo Pollone and Caterina Taricano and it presents a commented filmography, a complete bibliography, in addition to a selection of quotes from Citti himself and a number of memories by those who knew him and worked with him in the past. Among these: David Grieco, Giancarlo Scarchilli, Carlo Verdone, Pupi Avati, Sergio Rubini, Elena Sofia Ricci, Silvio Orlando, Rosario Fiorello, Enrico Montesano, Anna Melato, Ida di Benedetto, Vera Gemma.

After a first edition dedicated to minor and forgotten westerns, “Mezzogiorno di fuoco” returns with a tribute to one of the most important celebrities that characterized the history of the American genre par excellence: John Wayne.

In order to retrace the actor’s career seven titles will be presented, from the early days of sound cinema (The Big Trail, 1930) to his very last film (The Shootist, 1976), each directed by some of the greatest masters of Hollywood classics: Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, John Farrow, Henry Hathaway e Don Siegel. Only John Ford will participate with two titles, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and the only non-western movie of the event, Donovan’s Reef (1963). 

The audience will finally rediscover the classically intended heroic Wayne (as in Hondo, 1950), the tough and inflexible one (Red River, 1948) and also the ironic and light-hearted one (North to Alaska, 1960).

The importance of John Wayne in the history of Hollywood cinema is unquestionable, and it goes beyond just one genre. Wayne was the protagonist of great war and adventure movies, crime dramas and even comedies. But western is undoubtedly the one that created and solidified the myth.

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