Spike Lee, Juliette Binoche, Terry Gilliam and Jacqueline Bisset will be among the winners of this year’s Turin Film Festival, which will be held in the Piedmontese capital from November 21 to 29.
Now in its 43rd year, the northern Italian festival brings together screen icons to pay further homage to Daniel Brühl, Claude Lelouch, Vincent Lindon, Vanessa Redgrave, Stefania Sandrelli, Sergio Castellitto and Alexander Sokurov. The special guest line-up also includes Jason Biggs, Dominik Sanda, James Franco, Dolph Lundgren, Joanna Krig, and Hanna Schigula, all of whom will perform both new and esteemed works.
“We want to foster conversations between generations,” says Giulio Barze, the festival’s artistic director. “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 that spirit, Torino will put the big screen front and center, inviting award winners and guests to see them up close and personal with local audiences in the city’s theaters, rather than from a distance like on a closed red carpet. Each invitee will screen a film near and dear to them as part of a selection of 120 films. No single small screen project is planned.
“We’re probably the only big festival that doesn’t program a series,” Bass added with obvious pride. “It’s not because I don’t love them. It’s just a different language. All events are in theaters. It’s because we want to maintain the festival’s pure cinematic identity.”
“Nuremberg”
Presented by Sony Pictures Classics
This year’s festival will screen 104 features and 16 shorts, including 23 world premieres and 11 international premieres, opening with Eternity, produced by A24 and directed by David Frain, and ending with James Vanderbilt’s Nuremberg, starring Russell Crowe and Rami Malek.
“In these dark times, it felt brave to open with a story that reminds us that joy itself can be a form of resistance,” says Bass, whose Spectral Plane romantic comedy launches this year’s festival. As for the closer, which will be released in Europe for the first time, Bass calls it “one of the strongest ensemble films in years, with true Oscar-caliber performances from every actor.”
Between these bookends, Torino presents a strong slate of competitive and non-competitive programs. The feature, documentary, and short competition categories each consist of 16 titles, while the retrospectives, restorations, and regional premieres are grouped into three non-competition categories of 24 films.
Turin’s top nominees include Julia Kowalski’s Her Will Be Done, Annapurna Sriram’s Fucktoys, Amy Wang’s Slanted, Marianne Metivier’s Elsewhere at Night, and Gözde Kral’s Cinema Jazireh, making for a particularly rich lineup with a female perspective.
“It’s significant that 10 of the 16 films in competition this year are directed by women,” Bass said. “This is not the result of a quota, but a reflection of a reality that has finally emerged in force. It is a vivid and evolving portrait of cinema seen through the female gaze. Modern storytelling is enriched, expanded and redefined by women’s voices.”
“Fuck Toys”
Provided by SXSW
Out-of-competition shows feature established writers, up-and-coming talent, and actors-turned-directors. Radu Jude (“Dracula”) and Alejandro Amenábar (“The Captive”) will present their latest work alongside up-and-coming authors such as Alec Griffen Ross (“Billy Knight”) and Jason Biggs (“Untitled Home Invasion Romance”). Meanwhile, Spike Lee, the master of “The Heist to Roast,” will also bring his co-starring work, which received high acclaim at Cannes, to audiences in Turin, making it an unusual theatrical release for a movie that was streamed directly in Europe.
“We need to give the festival a twin soul,” says Bass, now in his second year directing Torino. “At our core we are auteur films, that is our DNA. But I wanted to add another face: something more popular, more attractive, more open to everyone. I want our city itself to be vibrant with cinema.”
