Lietta Tornabuoni, Festival Correspondent is the title of the tribute dedicated to the memorable and unforgotten exponent of Italian journalism. Curated by Natalia Aspesi, the tribute has been prepared in collaboration with the daily La Stampa. Natalia Aspesi, who is a member of the festival’s artistic committee and will present and discuss a number of films in the most important sections, will also offer a multi-faceted tribute to Lietta’s personality and her sophisticated style, highlighting the strong, decades-long bond shared by the two women, who considered themselves friends, colleagues, and sisters.
“At first, Lietta and I were sent to festivals to be frivolous commentators and not critics; we were sent to describe how the directors and the stars were dressed,” says Natalia Aspesi. “The work of the critics, the real ones, was done by the famous journalists of our papers. We were inseparable, we had lots of fun watching movies and writing. We were good friends but Lietta, who was a few years younger than me, was my generous teacher. Then she became the film critic for La Stampa and updated how we write about movies.”
“Natalia Aspesi’s special collaboration will offer festival-goers a lively, direct, and very sincere contribution,” says Stefano Francia di Celle, the director of the Torino Film Festival. “Her free gaze and valuable experience will be powerful weapons for valorizing the new films and understanding the creative pathways filmmakers follow as they make their first movies. Natalia’s perspicacity and irony will help some independent and more fragile films establish a closer rapport with audiences, even after their preview screenings in Turin.”
