Beware of those three: Alessandra De Luca, Federico Pontiggia and Francesco Alò, the triumvirate helming the 67th Taormina Film Fest demonstrates the strength of a festival directed by three journalists and film critics who wrote about world cinema for decades.
The trio, thanks to a skilful balance between personal stories and very different tastes has been able to find the common ground of an international event that must shake passionate moviegoers supporting the ultimate back to theatres that is essential to proclaim the very end of the long winter of our lockdown.
It’s been a very important choice to screen a festival selection simultaneously in some theaters of the main cities of Sicily, in collaboration with ANEC Sicilia. For the first time in its long history, the festival truly opened up to the territory, living simultaneously at Teatro Greco as in Sicilian theaters, combining the festival experience with an initiative supporting the whole audiovisual Italian industry.
This plan deserved a selection appealing a wider audience and the Dynamic Trio had the foresight to rely on “genres”, too often ignored from festivals, but since ever the true heart of cinema.
Taormina opened with a short concert of the Boys, the fictional band of Davide Ferrario’s movie (simultaneously screened in the affiliated Sicilian theaters) and has been the drumroll that underlined the festival revolution confirmed by the choice of other genre movies such as Claudio Cupellini’s La terra dei figli (28 June);Michela Cescon’s first feature Blue Eyes with Valeria Golino playing a maverick motorcycle robber (June 29); Will Gluck’s animation/live-action Peter Rabbit 2 – The Runaway and Euros Lyn’s Dream Horse, a the true story that sounds like a fairy tale. (June 30th).
A Classic Horror Story by Roberto De Feo and Paolo Strippoli and the closing Marvel cinecomic Black Widow is the icing on the cake of an event to which movie industry will be grateful.
