Friendship was in the spotlight at the Turin Film Festival, with Spike Lee and Antonio Banderas each taking a knee during Friday’s opening ceremony while presenting the other with a lifetime achievement award.
The American author and Spaniard was among 12 film luminaries to be awarded the festival’s Stella della Mole trophy, modeled after the 12 stars in the crown of Turin’s iconic National Cinema Museum. Film directors Claude Lelouch and Alexander Sokurov and actors Jacqueline Bisset, Daniel Brühl and Hanna Schygla were also celebrated, before the festival opened with a screening of David Frain’s Eternity.
“Acting has made me who I am,” Banderas told a stylish crowd at the Opera Royal Opera House in Italian. “This story started in the theater, but now I am finding my way back. Of course, I continue to make films, but theater remains a great club and my home. Today we live surrounded by artificial intelligence, but theater reminds us of natural intelligence.”
By contrast, Lee seems less keen to step up to the plate or step in front of the camera anew, joking that he appeared in his feature debut, She’s Gotta Have It, only out of financial necessity. “I only acted in that movie because there was no budget, so I couldn’t pay anyone,” he deadpans. “Now, the budget has been decided.”
Turin Film Festival
Starting Saturday, the city’s cinemas will host retrospectives as well as world and regional premieres, with attendees swapping evening wear for more casual attire to screen groundbreaking films to audiences across the city.
“We want to foster conversations between generations,” the festival’s artistic director Giulio Barze told Variety. “I want Turin to be a place where you can discover new voices, revisit the masters and fall in love with cinema again. There are no distractions, just sharing the light of the screen.”
True to its mission, the 43rd annual festival opened with a musical tribute to Paul Newman, the subject of a 24-film career retrospective this year. More than 70 members of local youth choirs performed the “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” anthem “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” accompanied by a large-screen slideshow celebrating Newman’s most iconic roles. The quirky homage culminated in a video address from Claire Newman, who has long been a keeper of her father’s legacy and was delighted to share it with an Italian audience.
This year’s festival, which runs from November 21 to 29, will feature 104 features and 16 shorts, including 23 world premieres and 11 international debuts. The special guest lineup also includes Jason Biggs, Dominic Sanda, James Franco, Dolph Lundgren, Vanessa Redgrave, Terry Gilliam, Marcia Silinski, Juliette Binoche and Alejandro Amenábar.
Turin Film Festival
