Giuseppe Tornatore: Last News

Rome’s historic Cinecittà Studios on Monday afternoon (Aug. 1) and was extinguished by three teams of firefighters. The fire broke out in the area where a set depicting renaissance Florence was housed and which was being decommissioned, destroying parts of it.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy’s Taormina Film Festival will pay homage to its Sicilian setting by celebrating the 25th anniversary of Giuseppe Tornatore’s steamy period drama “Malena” that launched Monica Bellucci‘s international career. The storied event, now headed once again by marketing guru Tiziana Rocca, will host a screening of a restored copy of the film about a 13-year-old boy’s obsession with a small-town siren in World War II Sicily that becomes the sad odyssey of a woman punished for her beauty, and is featuring a still of Bellucci in “Malena” on its poster.

Naman Ramachandran Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) is mounting “Wim Wenders – King of the Road – The India Tour,” marking the German filmmaker’s first visit to India at age 79. The retrospective, organized with the Wim Wenders Foundation and Goethe-Institut Mumbai, will showcase 18 of his works across five cities from Feb. 5-23.

Naman Ramachandran Director Giuseppe Tornatore is set to present a 4K restoration of his Oscar and Cannes-winning “Cinema Paradiso” at a new Italian film festival in Mumbai this September, marking his first-ever visit to India. The screening will headline Italian film festival “Cinema Italian Style – Celebrating Tornatore and the Masters Of Italian Cinema.” Organized by the Film Heritage Foundation in collaboration with Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Mumbai, Axis Bank and educational partner Istituto Europeo di Design, the festival aims to celebrate legends of Italian cinema and exhibit restored classics from past decades.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Willem Dafoe, who stars in Tim Burton’s fest opener “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” along with jury members Kleber Mendonça Filho (“Bacurau”) and Giuseppe Tornatore (“Cinema Paradiso”) turned up at the annual Venice Film Festival‘s pre-opening party on the rooftop of the Danieli Hotel on Tuesday night. Co-hosted by the Leone Film Group, Variety and the Danieli Hotel, the glamorous bash brought together a mix of stars, global industry movers and shakers, including hitmaking Italian director Paolo Genovese, Los Angeles-based producer Niels Juul (“Ferrari”) and Bárbara Paz, a Brazilian actor and filmmaker.

John Bleasdale Guest Contributor In the Antico Teatro in the Sicilian town of Taormina, the 70th edition of the Taormina Film Festival got off to a lively start, with the Nastri d’Argento Awards ceremony, amid a mix of comedy and controversy. The comedy was on hand with the loudest applause of the evening going to Carlo Verdone and Christian De Sica (above), two “pillars of Italian comedy” as they were introduced by Pilar Fogliati, star of “Confidenze,” and “Romeo Is Juliet.” Pilar herself was a recipient of her first Nastro d’Argento.

Ellise Shafer The full international jury for this year’s Venice Film Festival has been unveiled. The lineup joining president Isabelle Huppert is director-heavy, consisting of James Gray (“Ad Astra”), Andrew Haigh (“All of Us Strangers”), Agnieszka Holland (“Green Border”), Kleber Mendonça Filho (“Bacurau”), Abderrahmane Sissako (“Bamako”), Giuseppe Tornatore (“Cinema Paradiso”) and Julia von Heinz (“Treasure”). “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” star Zhang Ziyi rounds out the jury.

The Venice Film Festival has unveiled the names who will join Isabelle Huppert on the main Competition jury of its 81st edition, running 28 Aug 2024 – 7 Sept 2024. 

Lise Pedersen “The Return of the Projectionist,” which is running in the main competition at Swiss doc fest Visions du Réel, where it will have its world premiere, has been picked up by Paris-based doc specialist Cat&Docs. The feature debut of Orkhan Aghazadeh, it tells the story of Samid, a former projectionist in Azerbaijan’s remote Talysh mountains, who is determined to bring cinema back to life in his village using his old Soviet film projector.

It’s a weekend of well-reviewed indie openings with Bleecker Street’s Out Of Darkness, The Monk And The Gun (from the directors of Lunana: A Yak In The Classroom) and limited openings for The Taste Of Things, Perfect Days (Best International Feature nominated), Anthony Chen’s Drift, Bas Devos’ Here and Ennio by Giuseppe Tornatore, which premiered in Venice in 2021 and is finally getting a U.S. release.

Welcome to Global Breakouts, Deadline’s fortnightly strand in which we shine a spotlight on the TV shows and films killing it in their local territories. The industry is as globalized as it’s ever been, but breakout hits are emerging in pockets of the world all the time and it can be hard to keep track. So we’re going to do the hard work for you.

EXCLUSIVE: Music Box Films has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Giuseppe Tornatore’s documentary Ennio, paying tribute to the late, revered film composer Ennio Morricone.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Oscar-winning director Giuseppe Tornatore’s vintage TV series “Il Camorrista,” starring Ben Gazzara as one of the fiercest bosses of the Neapolitan Camorra crime syndicate, is being unearthed from the vault 37 years after the mobster himself quashed the show before it aired. “Il Camorrista” was shot in 1985 as part of an innovative production mounted by Italy’s glorious Titanus shingle and Silvio Berlusconi’s ReteItalia. The production comprised both a Tornatore feature film by the same title and the five-episode TV show.

Naman Ramachandran Jon Hamm, Ryan Coogler and Molly Shannon are among the luminaries headlining a new podcast that reunites former Sundance Film Festival directors John Cooper and Tabitha Jackson. Titled “The Film That Blew My Mind,” the first season of the podcast will have 20 episodes and will be co-hosted by Cooper and Jackson.

When I was in college cinema courses I made a Super 8 film called Movie Girl. It was a Hollywood-set love letter to movies centered on a Musso & Franks waitress who put herself dreamily into the plots of classic films. It won an award there but was the highlight of the directing career I never had. However I have always been partial to filmmakers who put their own early film going experience and passion into their careers now. You may have heard of them. Kenneth Branagh won an Oscar for doing just that in Belfast. Steven Spielberg got several nominations last year for his very personal The Fabelmans . Woody Allen had his own charming take in The Purple Rose Of Cairo. Peter Bogdanovich made a lasting impression with 1971’s The Last Picture Show, as did Giuseppe Tornatore with his Oscar winner, Cinema Paradiso. It is a combination of the latter two especially that might describe the feel of the latest movie about the love of movies, The Movie Teller (La Contadora de Peliculas) which had its World Premiere tonight at the Toronto Film Festival. And just in sheer numbers of classic film clips incorporated into its near two hour running time, this one sets a record in the little sub-genre. For movie lovers everywhere The Movie Teller is a must see.

“I wanted to create a film that was out of time,” Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher says about her Oscar-nominated live action short, Disney+ Original Films’ Le Pupille. “That was classic, but also hand-made.”

Avatar: The Way of Water‘s mega-publicized opening has brought movies back into the conversation, but movie-makers seem to have been lost in the mist. James Cameron’s persona is ablaze across the media but, by contrast, the very personal work of Sam Mendes, James Gray and even Steven Spielberg has done a fade-out in recent weeks.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Francesco Zippel’s Sergio Leone doc, which premieres on Tuesday at the Venice Film Festival, is the first portrait of the Italian master made with full support of his children Raffaella and Andrea. Titled “Sergio Leone: The Man Who Invented America,” the high-profile doc is premiering in the Venice Classics section for docs on cinema. It features an impressive list of voices holding forth on what makes Leone special for them. Among these are: Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Giuseppe Tornatore, Frank Miller, Darren Aronofsky, Damien Chazelle and Robert De Niro (see clip). But aside from Leone’s visionary talent as a director what emerges is that as his career escalated from the so-called “Dollars Trilogy” to “Once Upon a Time in the West” through to his final masterpiece, “Once Upon a Time in America,” Leone’s life was steeped in two inextricably linked passions: film and family. 

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentSince Cinecittà Studios was founded in 1937, the sprawling facilities have driven the golden age of Cinema Italiano.The famed city of cinema has also, albeit intermittently, been a magnet for international productions and endured wild fluctuations in the country’s political climate, before recently reemerging as a new frontier for the country’s film and TV industry.Located in the heart of the Mediterranean basin, a short ride from the center of Rome and its airports, Italy’s top production hub has to date, hosted more than 3,000 films that have earned 53 Oscars.During the period following World War II, the studios forged close ties to Hollywood, which helped the Italian industry gain its international standing. The myriad Italian pics made at the studios range from Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” (1960) and “8½” (1963) to Nanni Moretti’s “Sogni D’Oro” (1981), Sergio Leone’s epic “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984), Giuseppe Tornatore’s “The Legend of the Pianist on the Ocean” (1998) Paolo Sorrentino’s “Il Divo” (2008) and, more recently, his TV series “The New Pope” in 2019.

Eckhart Schmidt Producer and filmmaker Eckhart Schmidt has shot documentaries and five feature films in Sicily. Through his docs, he discovered that Bagheria-born Giuseppe Tornatore was highly influenced by the monsters of the Villa Palagonia, and that Francesco Rosi shot his movie “Salvatore Giuliano” on all original locations.

The David di Donatello Awards were held in Rome on Tuesday evening, the first time Italy’s equivalent to the Oscar has had a fully in-person ceremony in the pandemic era. Taking top honors was Paolo Sorrentino’s The Hand Of God which scooped Best Film and Director as well as Best Supporting Actress for Teresa Saponangelo and a tie for Best Cinematography. In the latter category, The Hand Of God shared the win with Freaks Out, a fantasy drama that likewise debuted in Venice.