The 43rd edition of the Turin film Festival (TFF) in the Piedmont capital from November 21 to 29 will feature a host of stars and 120 films but no TV series this time, artistic director Giulio Base said in presenting the event in Rome Friday, saying this was not snobbery against the small screen but they are two different art forms.
Among the international stars to be showcased are Spike Lee, Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero, Juliette Binoche, Daniel Brühl, James Franco, Terry Gilliam, Claude Lelouch, Alexander Sokurov, Hanna Schygulla, and Jacqueline Bisset, alongside Italian stalwarts including Stefania Sandrelli, Sergio Castellitto, Barbara Bobulova, Fortunato Cerlino, Pilar Fogliati, said Base.
A total of 120 titles are divided into three competition sections (feature films, documentaries, and short films) and three non-competitive sections (Out of Competition, Zibaldone, and Paul Newman Retrospective).
Many titles, but, bucking the current trend, few Italian ones compared to other festivals, and no TV series.
"No TV series," Base explained, "but not out of snobbery, but simply to defend the specificity of cinema.
Series are an art form equal to cinema, but they are something else, another art form." The criteria for choosing the films? "They don't have to be perfect, but memorable.
We didn't follow any common thread, although there is a recurring theme, that of an unhappy childhood." This is the case in Ester Ivakič's "Ida Who Sang So Badly Even the Dead Rose Up and Joined Her in Song," a monstrous title that tells the story of a little girl convinced that her off-key voice can prevent her grandmother from dying.
Motherhood, meanwhile, is the theme of Alice Tomassini's "Mothers," a documentary about the lives of women arrested in Cambodia for having had surrogate pregnancies.
Also in competition is Marianne Métivier's "Ailleurs la nuit," which follows four women over the course of a summer desperate to shed their skin.
This theme is also explored literally in Amy Wang's "Slanted," in which a Chinese-American woman undergoes a treatment to "look whiter." Among the titles out of competition, the festival features David Freyne's "Eternity," starring Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, and Callum Turner, a romantic fantasy comedy set in the afterlife where each soul has seven days to choose who to share eternity with.
Spike Lee, one of the most anticipated guests, will then present "Highest 2 Lowest" in Turin, a thriller about the music world, while Bill Condon will bring "Kiss of the Spider Woman," starring Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna.
Among the highlights is James Vanderbilt's Nuremberg, starring Rami Malek, Russell Crowe, and Michael Shannon, which recounts the trial of Nazi leaders.
The Zibaldone section will feature Sergio Castellitto's Zorro, which will receive one of the Mole's Stars: the protagonist is a homeless actor and a man who calls himself Zorro, who become so confused that they can no longer distinguish reality from fiction.
Some classics that have defined Turin and Italian cinema also return: Luigi Comencini's Woman of the Sunday School, which will be introduced by Jacqueline Bisset, and Ettore Scola's We All Loved Each Other So Much, introduced by Stefania Sandrelli.
And then, of course, there's the major retrospective dedicated to Paul Newman, to whom the festival poster is dedicated.
Twenty-four films, from Somebody Up There Likes Me to The Color of Money, will be presented.
His daughter Claire Newman will open the festival with a video message.
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