Canadian Premiere
Veteran filmmaker Paolo Taviani, whose accolades include both a Grand Jury Prize and Palme d’Or from Cannes, returns with his surrealistic exploration of the legacy of one of Italy’s most celebrated writers, Luigi Pirandello. Rather than a biopic, Leonora Addio explores Pirandello after death in his immaterial form as a collection of ashes in a Greek vase, and its delicate transportation from Rome to Sicily. This takes place after the defeat of Italy’s fascist government, with which Pirandello had a conflicting relationship. With stark black-and-white cinematography that portrays a post-war Italy with frank verisimilitude, the film calmly depicts various aspects of Italian culture and institutions, such as the church, superstition, the working class, and loyalty to one’s hometown.
The last act of the film sees an adaptation of one of Pirandello’s short stories, featuring scenes of brutality and coming face-to-face with senseless violence. The two stories fit together as a fantastical consideration of an artist, both through his life (or rather, his remains), work, and complex influence on a nation’s literature.
FIPRESCI Prize, Berlin 2022
Presented by
Fabrizio Ferracane, Matteo Pittiruti, Dania Marino, Dora Becker, Claudio Bigagli
Italy/France
2022
In Italian with English subtitles
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Image: © Courtesy of Elevation Pictures
Credits
Producer
Donatella Palermo
Screenwriter
Paolo Taviani
Cinematography
Paolo Carnera, Simone Zampagni
Editor
Roberto Perpignani
Original Music
Nicola Piovani
Director
Photo by Gerald Bruneau
Paolo Taviani
Paolo Taviani co-directed films with his brother Vittorio from the early 1960s. They dedicated themselves to evoking the past and to adapting literary works to film in the second phase of their career. Their film Caesar Must Die (2012) won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and the David di Donatello award for Best Film and Best Director from the Accademia del Cinema Italiano. With this work, Paolo, at 86 years of age, filmed for the first time on his own for his highly personal farewell to Vittorio and to the moviemaking they did together.
Filmography: Good Morning Babylon (1987); You Laugh (1998); Caesar Must Die (2012); Rainbow: A Private Affair (2017)