On Tuesday, March 22, during a meeting with the press at Casa Argentina en Roma, the Director of the Torino Film Festival, SteveDella Casa, along with Enzo Ghigo and Domenico De Gaetano – the President and the Director of the National Cinema Museum in Turin, respectively – announced the guidelines that will characterize the festival’s 40thedition.
“First of all, I would like to thank my predecessor,Stefano Francia di Celle, and his entire team for their extraordinary work during the difficult past two years, as well as the National Cinema Museum for the trust they have placed in me,” declared SteveDella Casa. “Right from the start, I have been completely in tune with its presidentEnzo Ghigo and its director Domenico De Gaetano, and this has also been the case with the heads of the Film Commission Torino Piemonte, in our shared awareness of the importance of further consolidating the collaboration and synergy among the organizations of Turin’s film system, in both the artistic and the industrial spheres. To this end, we are preparing an international conference withGaetano Renda on the relationship between film and movie theatres. The 40thTorino Film Festival must be organized in a spirit of renewal but it must also follow in the wake of tradition; it must regain its hallmark vitality, which was inevitably lost during the two years of the pandemic, combining once again experimentation, popular cinema, and genre films.”
And Steve Della Casa’s intentions have informed his decision to dedicate a tribute to the actor Malcolm McDowell in recognition of his extraordinary contributions to art house cinema, popular cinema, and TV series, in the spirit of the major retrospectives that have characterized the Torino Film Festival over the years.
The actor will be a guest at the TFF and will hold a masterclass conducted by David Grieco, the director of Evilenko, one of the seven movies – that include A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick and Caligola by Tinto Brass – which McDowell has personally chosen as the most illustrative of his career.
The 40thTFF will be a leaner festival. The program will include 4 competitive sections (the International Feature Film Competition, the International Documentary Competition, the Italian Documentary Competition, and the Italian Short Film Competition), an Out-of-Competition section dedicated to the most interesting productions of the ongoing year, and a few Special Programs.
One of the Special Programs, always in the spirit and tradition of the festival, will be a mini-retrospective dedicated to westerns. Six movies, chosen from a shortlist of twenty and directed by or starring cult filmmakers and movie stars, will be presented in the cinemas by cinephiles and scholars of the genre, including Francesco Ballo and Marco Giusti. “These movies characterize the TFF for what it must become once more: the locus (and more) of the most extreme cinephilia,” says Steve Della Casa.
To properly celebrate the 40 years of the Torino Film Festival, the inaugural evening – surprising and pop, at the same time – will be held at the Teatro Regio and will be broadcast live.
The Director will be assisted by a new Selection Committee composed of Giulio Casadei, Antonello Catacchio, Massimo Causo, Grazia Paganelli, Giulio Sangiorgio, and Caterina Taricano. The Consultants for the Artistic Direction will be Luca Beatrice, Claudia Bedogni, David Grieco, Luigi Mascheroni, Paola Poli, Alena Shumakova, and Luciano Sovena.
