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Italy’s Taormina Film Festival kicks off its 69th edition Friday evening against the backdrop of its landmark Teatro Antico amphitheatre with a “Pavarotti Forever” benefit event headlined by Placido Domingo and Vittorio Grigolo.

It’s not the typical opening for a film festival, but it is in keeping with the eclectic programming of incoming artistic director Barrett Wissman, whose interview with Deadline on his plans for the festival can be read here.

Much is riding on the edition, with Wissman being brought in to raise its local and international profile after a turbulent decade, which was compounded by the Covid pandemic.

Topping the bill over the first weekend is the Italian premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny in the presence of Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Mads Mikkelsen. It’s the first time a major Disney production has touched down at the festival since Inside Out in 2015. Indiana Jones,...

Roberto Andò with Anne-Katrin Titze: “I am rehearsing a new play in Naples. It’s a play by Colm Tóibín.”

Toni Servillo (star of Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning The Great Beauty) plays Luigi Pirandello (winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize for literature) in Roberto Andò’s enchanted Strangeness, which is as gracefully far away from a biopic as it gets. The two men the famous author incognito encounters, both undertakers and madly involved in local theatre, are played by the popular Italian comedy team Ficarra e Picone (Salvatore Ficarra as Sebastiano Vella and Valentino Picone as Onofrio Principato).

Luigi Pirandello (Toni Servillo) with Sebastiano Vella (Salvatore Ficarra) and Onofrio Principato (Valentino Picone) in Roberto Andò’s Strangeness

I first met Roberto Andò the morning before Long Live Freedom (Viva La Libertà), starring Toni Servillo, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Valerio Mastandrea was screened at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Cinecittà...

The Hummingbird (Il Colibrì) director Francesca Archibugi with Anne-Katrin Titze on Dancing Barefoot: “That Patti Smith song is very important to me.” And The Clash’s London Calling: “It does belong to Marco’s (Pierfrancesco Favino) story as a boy …”

Francesca Archibugi’s The Hummingbird with songs from Patti Smith, Billie Holiday, and The Clash, stars Pierfrancesco Favino (in Andrea Di Stefano's The Last Night With Amore at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival), Nanni Moretti, Bérénice Bejo, Laura Morante, Kasia Smutniak, Benedetta Porcaroli, Fotinì Peluso, Azzurra Di Marco, Francesco Centorame, and Sergio Albelli Is the opening night selection of Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà’s 22nd edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema.

Luisa Lattes (Bérénice Bejo) with Marco Carrera (Pierfrancesco Favino)

Other highlights include Roberto Andò’s Strangeness with Toni Sevillo (Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning The Great Beauty), as Nobel Prize-winning playwright Luigi Pirandello, Salvo Ficarra,...

Belgian directors Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s Italian-language drama The Eight Mountains and veteran Marco Bellocchio’s Exterior Night topped the 68th edition of Italy’s David di Donatello Awards on Wednesday evening.

The Eight Mountains won best film as well as best non-original screenplay, photography and sound.

Based on the novel of the same name by Paolo Cognetti, it stars Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi as two men from different backgrounds who form a life-long bond during summers spent together as children in a remote mountain village.

The film world premiered in Competition at Cannes last year where it co-won the Jury Prize. Read the Deadline review here.

It is the second time in the history of the awards that a film by non-Italian directors has clinched the best film prize.

The last time was in 1971 when the Dino de Laurentiis-produced epic Waterloo by Russian director Sergei Bonderchuk,...

“The Eight Mountains,” Belgian directors Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s Italian-language drama about friendship, mountains and growing up, scored the top prize at Italy’s 68th David di Donatello Awards.

Besides winning best picture, the film also scooped statuettes for best non-original screenplay, photography and sound.

Given that the directors are not Italian, it was a particularly significant victory for “Mountains,” which was praised as “quietly magnificent” by Variety critic Jessica Kiang. The film, which is currently playing well on the U.S. arthouse circuit, tracks the decades-long friendship between two Italian boys named Pietro and Bruno — one from the city, the other a shepherd boy from the Alps.

“It’s pretty incredible,” commented a visibly moved Van Groeningen. “Two Belgians who win this prize in Italy for an Italian movie.” “Thank you for this declaration of love,” added Vandermeersch, his partner in life. “We love Italy very much.

The Italian premieres of Cannes Film Festival opener Jeanne du Barry starring Johnny Depp and Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny will be among the international highlights of the 69th Taormina Film Festival which gave a taster of its line-up at a press conference in Rome on Tuesday.

Principal cast for James Mangold’s Indiana Jones reboot including Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Antonio Banderas, John Rhys-Davies and Mads Mikkelsen are expected to be in attendance for the screening.

The event, unfolding June 23 to July 1 in Sicily, is under the new co-artistic directorship of Barrett Wissman this year.

There will also be Italian premieres for Lisa Cortes’s Little Richard: I Am Everything, a documentary about the life and career of the legendary musician, and A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One, starring Teyana Taylor.

Italian highlights include the world premiere of the comedy The Worst Days by Edoardo Leo,...

Italian sales company True Colours has closed a raft of sales following Berlin’s European Film Market. Italy’s box office hit “La Stranezza” (“Strangeness”) got picked up for a dozen territories and queer romantic drama “Norwegian Dream” also sold widely, including to North America.

Directed by Roberto Andò, “Strangeness” (pictured) toplines Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) as Nobel-prize-winning playwright Luigi Pirandello. This tragicomic period piece about how Pirandello found inspiration to write his masterpiece “Six Characters in Search of an Author” has been a sleeper hit at the Italian box office, coming from nowhere to pull more than €5.5 million ($5.8 million) and becoming the local 2022 box office champ.

Now “Strangeness,” which is produced by Bibi Film and Tramp Limited with Rai Cinema and Medusa, will be playing in: Spain (Alfa Pictures); Poland (Aurora Film); Portugal (Il Sorpasso); Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay (Zeta Film); former Yugoslavia (Stars Media); Taiwan...

Actor-director Marco D’Amore, who played the ruthless central character Ciro Di Marzio on the Italian mob show “Gomorrah,” is directing “Caracas” a Naples-set drama in which he stars opposite Toni Servillo.

“Caracas” is a co-production between Picomedia, Mad Entertainment and Vision Distribution, which will release the film in Italy.

Vision Distribution’s international unit, headed by veteran sales agent Catia Rossi, is launching sales on the film at Berlin’s upcoming European Film Market.

In “Caracas,” which is based on writer Ermanno Rea’s novel “Napoli Ferroviaria,” Servillo plays Giordano Fonte, a Neapolitan author of international fame who returns to his hometown after many years. There he intersects with a former acquaintance nicknamed Caracas, a man originally from Venezuela who, having been a Neo-fascist skinhead, is now in the process of converting to Islam.

The film is a journey into the multi-ethnic, crime-ridden port city, where Caracas rules over the area near Naples’ central station.

Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans,” Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Michael Mann’s “Ferrari,” Roman Polanski’s “The Palace,” “The Son” with Anthony Hopkins, and “Golda” with Helen Mirren are among the theatrical releases lined up for the rest of this year and next year for Italy’s 01 Distribution. Paolo Del Brocco, CEO of the distributor’s parent company, Rai Cinema, presented the lineup at the Torino Film Festival on Friday, and discussed an adjustment in his company’s production strategy in favor of bigger budget Italian films.

As well as the stellar international titles, there is also a strong Italian contingent on the 01 Distribution slate, including Marco Bellocchio’s “La Conversione,” Matteo Garrone’s “Io capitano,” “Il ritorno de Casanova,” starring Toni Servillo, and Saverio Costanzo’s “Finalmente l’alba,” starring Lily James.

“It is a luminous list because cinema in theaters illuminates cities, urban spaces,...