The upcoming festival, which is due to take place from November 24th to December 2nd, in the northern Italian city of Turin, will also feature a retrospective dedicated to American movie star par excellence John Wayne, who is also featured on their poster.

Kicking off the first announcements for the much anticipated Torino Film Festival is a poster signed by Italian artist Ugo Nespolo, which features John Wayne picking up Natalie Wood in the iconic scene from the 1956 film The Searchers.

The festival’s choice is a conscious one, which they explained in the press release announcing this year’s poster choice. “In the festival's pursuit of promoting popular cinema as much as arthouse cinema, the image of the 41st TFF is also accompanied by a quote from Jean-Luc Godard: ‘How can I hate John Wayne and love him tenderly when abruptly he takes Natalie Wood into his arms in the next-to-the-last reel of The Searchers?’”

Powered by the National Museum of Cinema, the Torino Film Festival will retrace the actor’s career, by presenting seven titles, from the early days of sound cinema (The Big Trail, 1930) to his very last film (The Shootist, 1976) — each directed by some of the greatest masters of Hollywood classics: Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, John Farrow, Henry Hathaway and Don Siegel. Only John Ford, the iconic Westerns’ filmmaker, will participate with two titles, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and the only non-western movie of the event, Donovan’s Reef (1963). 

The audience will finally rediscover the classically intended heroic Wayne (as in Hondo, 1950), the tough and inflexible one (Red River, 1948) and also the ironic and light-hearted one (North to Alaska, 1960).

The importance of John Wayne in the history of Hollywood cinema is unquestionable, and it goes beyond just one genre. Wayne was the protagonist of great war and adventure movies, crime dramas and even comedies. But western is undoubtedly the one that created and solidified the myth.

This will mark the second year in a row for TFF artistic director Steve Della Casa and he will host the opening night celebration in honor of Pupi Avati, along with a number of personalities from the world of cinema and entertainment who shared important moments of their human and artistic journey with Avati and who will take the stage to pay tribute to him, including Micaela Ramazzotti, Neri Marcorè and Lodo Guenzi.

Patroness of TFF’s opening ceremony will be actress and former model Catrinel Marlon.

Giuseppe ‘Pupi’ Avati is a film director, producer, and screenwriter born in Bologna in 1938. He is known for his horror genre films like The House with Laughing Windows from 1976 and the 1983 Revenge of the Dead.

Following the success of the previous edition, the opening ceremony of the 41st Torino Film Festival will again be broadcast live on Rai Radio 3 as part of the Hollywood Party program starting at 19.00.

The setting for the opening night, which is part of the festival's collaboration with RAI - TFF's Main Media Partner for years -, will be the prestigious Reggia di Venaria.

Also screening, this one on the second day of the festival will be TFF's first Out-of-Competition film, A Difficult Year, the irresistible new comedy by Intouchables directors Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, starring Pio Marmaï, Jonathan Cohen and Noémie Merlant, will be presented on Saturday, November 25th. 

The 41st Torino Film Festival is also pleased to announce the Out of Competition Italian premiere of Christian Petzold's Afire, in the presence of the director. Set during a scorching summer in an isolated house in a forest on the shores of the Baltic Sea, the film recounts the vacation of a group of friends that gradually turns into a nightmare due to a huge forest fire. The film won the Silver Bear at this year’s Berlinale back in February.

The activities of the 41st Torino Film Festival will also include a retrospective dedicated to Sergio Citti, on the occasion of the 90th year since his birth, realized in collaboration with the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia – Cineteca Nazionale. Collaborator of Pier Paolo Pasolini and a unique director in the Italian scene, Citti will be paid homage by TFF through the first ever retrospective entirely dedicated to his work, in which all the films that he directed for cinema and all his TV works will be shown: from Ostia to Fratella e Sorello, also including the TV series Sogni e bisogni. Each screening will be presented by one or more guests among film historians, performers and collaborators of Sergio Citti.

On the occasion of the retrospective, curated by Stefano Boni, Grazia Paganelli, Matteo Pollone and Caterina Taricano, a volume edited by the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia – Cineteca Nazionale will be published. It will also be curated by Matteo Pollone and Caterina Taricano and it presents a commented filmography, a complete bibliography, in addition to a selection of quotes from Citti himself and a number of memories by those who knew him and worked with him in the past. Among these: David Grieco, Giancarlo Scarchilli, Carlo Verdone, Pupi Avati, Sergio Rubini, Elena Sofia Ricci, Silvio Orlando, Rosario Fiorello, Enrico Montesano, Anna Melato, Ida di Benedetto, Vera Gemma.

For more information, check out the Torino Film Festival website.