Carlo Verdone will be the Guest Director of the 37th Torino Film Festival. The director- screenwriter-actor will be in Turin during the festival and will present the section he has curated, “Five Great Emotions,” which features the movies: Ordet by Carl Theodor Dreyer, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape by Lasse Hallström, Divorce Italian Style by Pietro Germi, Being There by Hal Ashby, and Sunset Boulevard by Billy Wilder.
“I am truly happy to accept Emanuela Martini’s invitation to spend a few days at the Torino Film Festival as the Guest Director,” declared Carlo Verdone. “I have decided to present five very different movies which will always remain in my memory as a movie-goer. Five films which enchanted and moved me, not only for their perfect direction, but above all for the remarkable performances of their protagonists. I have seen each one of these movies at least three times, discovering new details which had escaped me before. It might seem strange that I have only included one comedy but as a first step I always try to choose movies with a ‘strong’ content, which spark intimate, bitter, poetic, or melancholy feelings in me. Movies which leave me with a caress, or a punch in the gut, or a reflection. In short, what I search for in movies is poetry”.
“Carlo Verdone is one of the few Italian authors who have accompanied my generation over the years: characters, aspirations, changing desires, and often you see yourself and don’t even realize it,” says Emanuela Martini, director of the Torino Film Festival. “This is why I am so fond of his movies, because they also recount me and my friends, yesterday’s and today’s. Most of the time he makes fun of himself (and of us) in comedies (which is something marvelous). Like a great many members of my generation, I also share his passion as an omnivorous movie-lover, that passion which movies can spark from various stimuli, visual, sentimental, rational, or instinctive. His selection for the Torino Film Festival reflects this all-around receptiveness, this open-mindedness toward the emotions emanating from the screen. I think he could have chosen another hundred different movies and that it was hard to decide; but I truly appreciate the five ‘gems’ he has proposed.”
