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Actress Monica Bellucci will be feted with the 2017 Virna Lisi award in Rome on Nov. 7 as part of the Fondazione per Roma's Cityfest series. 

The prize will be delivered by Lisi's son, Corrado Pesci, and presented by director Giuseppe Tornatore. 

Lisi was one of the rare Italian actresses who worked frequently across Italy and Hollywood. She gained fame in postwar Italian film, including starring in Casanova 70 opposite Marcello Mastroianni and later appearing with Jack Lemmon in How to Murder Your Wife and as Catherine de Medici in Queen Margot.

The Virna Lisi prize was started in 2015, first going to...

‘Toni Erdmann’ (Courtesy: Tiff)

By: Carson Blackwelder

Managing Editor

It’s not too often that foreign-language films get recognized for anything at the Oscars beyond the best foreign-language film category — but it does happen. And, believe it or not, it happens more for best original screenplay and best adapted screenplay than many other categories. A prime example of that is Toni Erdmann, Germany’s submission this year that is proving to be a cross-category threat, which could score a nomination — or a win — for its writing.

The story of Toni Erdmann — which has a solid Rotten Tomatoes score of 91% — follows a father who is trying to reconnect with his adult daughter after the death of his dog. It sounds simple enough but, of course, the two couldn’t be more unalike. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016 and where it won the Fipresci Prize. Since then, it...

"Tonino Guerra, the poet and screenwriter from Emilia-Romagna who has worked with so many directors, died this morning," reports Camillo de Marco at Cineuropa. "He had turned 92 on March 16."

Even the honed-down list at Wikipedia of directors for whom Guerra wrote is rather astounding: "Michelangelo Antonioni with L'avventura, La notte, L'eclisse, Red Desert, Blow-Up, Zabriskie Point and Identification of a Woman, Federico Fellini with Amarcord, Theo Angelopoulos with Landscape in the Mist, Eternity and a Day and The Weeping Meadow, Andrei Tarkovsky with Nostalghia and Francesco Rosi with the militant politics of The Mattei Affair, Lucky Luciano and Illustrious Corpses."

All in all, he wrote more than 100 screenplays, was nominated for an Oscar three times (for Casanova '70, Blow-Up and Amarcord), won Best Screenplay at Cannes (for Angelopoulos's Voyage to Cythera) and the Pietro Bianchi Award at Venice, among many other prizes.

The Golden Apricot Film Festival Board has issued...

The legendary Italian scriptwriter and novelist, who died yesterday, worked with a host of Europe's greatest auteurs. Here we pick the highlights of his extraordinary oeuvre

It was Tonino Guerra's fate to become the scriptwriter of choice for a string of master directors whose status as auteurs – "authors" of their films – tended to diminish the status of the writers involved. Nevertheless, Guerra established himself as a major figure in Italian cinema during its golden period in the 1960s and early 70s, as well as venturing further afield to collaborate with the likes of Tarkovsky and Angelopoulos.

But it is the amazing string of films he made with Michelangelo Antonioni for which he will primarily be remembered. After spending time as a schoolteacher in his 20s, he broke into the film industry in his 30s, receiving his first credit aged 37 for Man and Wolves, by Bitter Rice director Giuseppe de Santis.

Hollywood screenwriter Tonino Guerra has died at the age of 92.

The Italian moviemaker worked on more than 100 scripts and was best known for his regular collaboration with director Michelangelo Antonioni, earning an Oscar nomination for best screenplay for their film Blow-Up in 1967.

He was also nominated for an Academy Award for 1973 movie Amarcord, with fellow writer Federico Fellini, and in 1966 for Casanova 70.

Guerra was born in 1920, and honed his writing skills after he was imprisoned in a German concentration camp during World War II.

He was part of the famed neo-realism movement in Italian cinema during the late 1940s and '50s, but later worked with contemporary directors including Steven Soderbergh and Giuseppe Tornatore.

Italy's former culture minister Walter Veltroni said, "We have lost a poet, a genius and marvellous person."

Guerra was honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the Venice Film Festival in 1994.

Tonino Guerra, the screenwriter who collaborated with Italian neorealist greats Federico Fellini, Vittorio De Sica, and Michelangelo Antonioni, has died at the age of 92, reports the Afp. He had been battling illness for several months at his home in the central Italian city of Rimini.

Guerra’s start as a writer was as dramatic as his films themselves: He began working on his earliest screenplays while imprisoned in a German concentration camp during World War II. After getting his start on Giuseppe De Santis’ 1956 release Men and Wolves, Guerra became a staple of the Italian film industry, co-writing more than 100 screenplays in his 52-year career.

Marcello Mastroianni is one of the finest gems ever to grace the big screen.  He has charm and wit to spare, and his portrayals on screen seem absolutely effortless, even when they are mired in histrionics. Luckily for us, Mario Monicelli's Casanova '70 is not one of those films, it is a light, sexy comedy that pushed the boundaries of decency in a way that the Italian film industry was better at than anyone. There are numerous beautiful starlets adorning this wonderfully fun feature, but none of them outshine Mastroianni, which is a testament to the light he brings to this film.  I wish I could say that the HD image of the film was as impressive as the performances, but it is a bit...

Not even Moneyball could beat The Lion King 3D at the box office this weekend, as Anthony D'Alessandro reports, but it's for Moneyball that we've got a roundup rolling on and on beyond all reason. IndieWIRE's Peter Knegt notes that "the specialty box office had a clear winner in Weekend," and we've got a roundup on that one as well.

"Wholly unrelated to the 1975 Sam Peckinpah film of the same name, Killer Elite is distinguished by one no-mercy, eye-gouging, testicle-punching brawl, and one whoppingly indifferent screenplay," writes Nick Pinkerton in the Voice. A quick sketch from Time Out Chicago's AA Dowd: Jason Statham "plays an ex-special-ops agent yanked out of retirement when someone kidnaps his mentor (Robert De Niro, in the Liam Neeson role). The guilty party, a deposed dictator with a chip on his shoulder, wants our erstwhile Transporter to knock off a trio of British mercenaries. 'I'm done with killing,...

Italian film director and screenwriter who established a new school of social-realist comedy

The Italian film director Mario Monicelli has died aged 95, after jumping out of a hospital window in Rome. Monicelli directed more than 60 films, most of which he co-wrote. He was best known for I Soliti Ignoti (Big Deal On Madonna Street, 1958), which was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign-language film. It was remade by Louis Malle as Crackers (1984) and turned into a Broadway musical, Big Deal, by Bob Fosse in 1986. Monicelli's original is one of the most internationally admired Italian comedies of the past 60 years.

Born in Viareggio, Tuscany, Monicelli was the son of a journalist, Tomaso Monicelli, who founded one of the earliest Italian film magazines. Tomaso killed himself in 1946. Mario studied at the universities of Milan and Pisa and took an early interest in films. With the future publisher Alberto Mondadori, he collaborated...

Well, they say these things come in threes. After hearing about the passing of both Leslie Nielsen and Irvin Kershner earlier today, we now have another filmmaker's death to report. You may not recognize his name, but Mario Monicelli held a prominent position in Italy's film industry after WWII. He was a director who was considered one of the fathers of Italian comedy, most notably from the 1940s to the 1960s. At age 95, Monicelli died, sadly, not from old age, but from suicide when he jumped from the fifth floor of a hospital. The director was reportedly suffering from pancreatic cancer and his condition was believed to be terminal. Walter Veltroni, former Rome mayor, has stated, "We feel profoundly and humanly hurt by his death, which we know is a loss that weighs and will continue to weigh heavily on us." While I'll admit that I'm not familiar with Monicelli's work,...

Mario Monicelli did not go quietly into that good night. Upon learning his condition was terminal, the Oscar-nominated director of I Compagni and Casanova 70 took a page right out of the movies and on Monday night leaped to his death from a fifth-story hospital window in Rome. The 95-year-old filmmaker had been admitted a few days ago with pancreatic troubles, a spokeswoman for San Giovanni hospital told the Associated Press. "We feel profoundly and humanly hurt by his death, which we know is a loss that weighs and will continue to weigh heavily on us," former Rome Mayor Walter Vetroni said in a statement. Monicelli was considered a master of Italian comedy in the 1950s and '60s. His...

Kick-Ass

DVD & Blu-Ray, Universal

Mark Millar and John Romita Jr's comic book series Kick-Ass didn't so much rewrite the masked crimefighter genre as it did just plain revel in the joy of it. Like the comic, Matthew Vaughn's movie version is full of fun and colour – the "no black costumes" ethos of the source is fully exploited on the screen with green, yellow, red and purple being the chosen colour scheme for this year's superfolk (apart from Nic Cage's more old-school Big Daddy, who dresses like Batman and even channels Adam West for his voice). Brit Aaron Johnson plays a regular, geeky American guy who loves his comic books and can't help but see the need for real heroes in today's violent world. His first attempt at crimefighting results in a severe beating, leaving him with nerve endings that feel no pain and his bones reinforced with metal. So...

Rome -- The Rome International Film Festival said Monday it would give its Marcus Aurelius career honor to prolific Italian screenwriter Suso Cecchi d'Amico, who died Saturday at the age of 96.

Cecchi d'Amico, the pseudonym for Giovanna Cecchi, worked with many of the most important directors of Italy's post-war era, including Michelangelo Antonioni, Mario Monicelli, Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica, Luchino Visconti and Franco Zeffirelli. Her list of more than 100 writing credits includes "Roma Citta Aperta" (Rome, Open City), "Ladri di biciclette" (Bicycle Thieves), and "Il Gatopardo" (The Leopard). She was nominated for an Oscar for her work on Monicelli's "Casanova '70."

The Rome festival said that Monicelli, still working at the end of 95, will accept the award on Cecchi d'Amico's behalf, with the late writer's three children expected to be on hand for the event.

The fifth edition of the festival will take place this year Oct. 28-Nov.

Celebrated Italian screenwriter Suso Cecchi D'Amico has died at the age of 96.

The prolific writer, who contributed to classics including Bicycle Thieves and The Leopard, passed away in her hometown of Rome on Saturday. The cause of death has yet to be confirmed.

Cecchi D'Amico racked up over 100 film credits during her career and was nominated for an Academy Award for her 1965 comedy Casanova 70.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano has led the tributes to the star, hailing her as a "great protagonist of one of the best seasons of Italian cinema".

Cecchi D'Amico was awarded a Golden Lion in acknowledgement of her lifetime achievements at the 1994 Venice Film Festival.

She is survived by her three children and a funeral is scheduled in the Italian capital on Monday, reports the Associated Press.

Italian screenwriter who worked with directors such as Visconti and Zeffirelli

The Italian screenwriter Suso Cecchi d'Amico, who has died aged 96, collaborated on the scripts of more than 100 films, including Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di Biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948), William Wyler's Roman Holiday (1953), Mario Monicelli's I Soliti Ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street, 1958) and Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano (1962). She also worked with Michelangelo Antonioni on Le Amiche (The Girlfriends, 1955) and Franco Zeffirelli on Jesus of Nazareth (1977), but she was best known for her creative contribution to the films of Luchino Visconti, including Il Gattopardo (The Leopard, 1963).

She was born Giovanna Cecchi in Rome to a Tuscan painter, Leonetta Pieraccini, and the literary critic Emilio Cecchi, a major figure in 20th-century Italian letters. For a few years in the early 1930s, before the Cinecittà studios were built in Rome, her father had been entrusted by Mussolini's government with...

One of Italy's leading screenwriters, he worked on 140 films

One of Italy's most respected and prolific screenwriters, Furio Scarpelli, who has died aged 90, worked on the scripts of about 140 films, sometimes without a credit, and received three shared Oscar nominations, for I Compagni (The Organiser, 1963), Casanova '70 (1965) and Il Postino (1994). Scarpelli enjoyed a lengthy writing partnership, from 1949 until 1985, with Agenore Incrocci, also known as Age. The pair collaborated on the 1958 film I Soliti Ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street), about a team of makeshift thieves, which owed much of its success to the brilliant comic characterisations. The film, starring Vittorio Gassman and Marcello Mastroianni, helped to launch the genre of commedia all'italiana ("comedy Italian-style").

Scarpelli was born in Rome. His Neapolitan father, Filiberto, was a satirical writer who founded a humorous magazine, Il Travaso delle Idee. Furio began his own career as a cartoonist. It was after the second world war,...

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Furio Scarpelli has died at the age of 90.

Scarpelli, best known for his work on 1966 western The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, passed away on Wednesday at his home in Rome, Italy after a long battle with heart problems.

He famously teamed up with another screenwriter, Agenore Incrocci, for the bulk of his writing duties, forming the duo Age & Scarpelli.

The pair, who worked on 120 films together, received two joint Academy Awards nominations in the 1960s, for The Organizer and Casanova '70. In 1995 Scarpelli received his third Oscar nomination for Il Postino (The Postman), which he wrote with his son Giacomo.

Scarpelli is survived by his wife and two sons.