Always a star-studded event, the festival will also revisit ‘Diario di Guttuso’ a television work from 1982 featuring the beloved Italian artist, a film which already showed the highly personal style of Oscar winning filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore.

The Taormina Film Festival has announced the lineup for its latest, 70th edition of the event. Marco Müller, a respected film programmer and former festival director of Venice, Rotterdam, Locarno and Rome film festivals will be at the helm of Taormina. The festival aims to create a crossroads between “pop, glamour and Mediterranean identity,” according to the latest press release. Whether it will manage that, remains to be seen.

But for now, it is putting its best foot forward with confirmed appearances by Italian comedy stars Christian De Sica and Carlo Verdone, along with many international stars slated to participate, such as Sharon Stone, Nicolas Cage, Bella Thorne, Rebecca De Mornay, to name a few.

Opening Night will also comprise of a special event by the Nastri d'Argento — the Italian equivalent to the Golden Globes, awarded since 1946 by the Sindacato Nazionale Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani. To mark the Festival's 70th anniversary, the Nastri d’Argento will pay tribute to Italian comedy on opening night, part of “an edition that combines Hollywood stardom, the human dimension and a celebration of diversity.”

Seven titles will be at the heart of the festival, and are part of their Gala program. In order of screening, they will kick off with US horror film Saint Clare by Mitzi Peirone starring Bella Thorne, Rebecca De Mornay and Ryan Philippe; followed by action title Twisters directed by Lee Isaac Chung starring Daisy Jessica Edgar-Jones; psychological thriller The Surfer by Lorcan Finnegan starring Nicolas Cage; Il giudice ed il boss, which the director of Placido Rizzotto, Pasquale Scimeca, dedicates to the memory of an anti-mafia hero such as Cesare Terranova; three rom-coms with the British-Icelandic Touch, directed by renowned filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur and starring the very popular Japanese model and singer Kôki; and two Italian films, L'invenzione di noi due by Corrado Ceron starring Lino Guanciale, Silvia D'Amico and Paolo Rossi; and Finché notte non ci separi by Riccardo Antonaroli starring Pilar Fogliati, Filippo Scicchitano and Valeria Bilello which will close the festival. The Galas will all be held in the open air picturesque setting of the Teatro Antico di Taormina, an ancient Greek amphitheater overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

Within the Palazzo dei congressi, there will be a line up dedicated to the Focus Mediterraneo, which will allow the festival to open up to the world and enter into its most burning debates, starting with the international premiere of From Ground Zero, the collective film coordinated by Rashid Masharawi that presents the "tale of untold stories" signed by 22 young Palestinian filmmakers who have filmed daily life in Gaza. The master of Israeli cinema and my personal favorite Amos Gitai returns to Taormina with Shikun, an abridged version of his cinema and his vision of the country's contradictions; while in To A Land Unknown, Mahdi Fleifel delves into the world of illegal Arab immigrants in EU countries. Two major French auteur movies are hosted by Focus Mediterraneo: the international premiere of the full version of Va savoir by Jacques Rivette, the Pirandellian film starring Sergio Castellitto, which will introduce the screening and world premiere of Filmlovers! by Arnaud Desplechin, the English-language version of Spectateurs, the film in which the French director celebrated the magic of cinema watched in a movie-theater. Following his Hollywood successes, Chilean-Swedish director Daniel Espinosa sets the story of a human trafficker in the Italian south in his brand new Madame Luna, while Thierry de Peretti with his A son image returns to his native Corsica to recount the life, friendships and loves of a young photographer during the political turmoil on the island from the late ‘70s onwards.

Officina Sicilia is where different souls coexist. First and foremost, showing the most recent series made in Sicily through the most significant moments, starting with L'arte della gioia by Valeria Golino starring Tecla Insolia, Jasmine Trinca, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi; Vanina - Un vicequestore a Catania by Davide Marengo starring Giusy Buscemi; the first episodes, directed by Piero Messina, of L'ora - Inchiostro contro piombo; and the apocalyptic Sicily of Anna by Niccolò Ammaniti. Alongside this wide range of films, an impressive quintet of world premieres (four first-time directors and one second-time director) reminds us that Sicily is a laboratory of ever-renewed experiences that push its cinema forward, at 360 degrees: Quir by Nicola Bellucci, La bocca dell'anima by Giuseppe Carleo, Tre regole infallibili by Marco Gianfreda, Pietra madre by Daniele Greco and Mauro Maugeri and Il ladro di stelle cadenti by Francisco Saia. Even well-established Sicilian talent chose to experiment, including Tony Sperandeo and his free-jazz performance in Aurelio Grimaldi's new film La rieducazione which receives its world premiere.

Officina Sicilia is enriched by a subsection of rediscovered Sicilian cinema, entitled Ieri, Oggi, Domani, which aims at recovering the boldest works of the past that influenced the cinema of today and the future, ranging from a tribute to the legendary Panaria Film, founded in 1947 by Prince Francesco Alliata di Villafranca. Some of its most important productions will be presented at this Festival (restorations will be screened), from the daring  documentary shorts to the two different versions, in terms of language and editing, of Vulcano and Volcano (1952) by William Dieterle. Alongside the re-showing of the works of the most unexpected East Coast directors including Maria Arena and the collettivo catanese cane capovolto, Sicilian cinema poised between fiction and document is explored through the authorial production of Costanza Quatriglio and the works of the young documentary filmmakers of the CSC - Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Palermo. 

Particularly valuable is the last of the non-fiction films in the program, Diario di Guttuso, a mosaic itinerary reconstructing famed painter and politician Renato Guttuso's life through places, friends and paintings. This was originally a television work from 1982 that already showed the highly personal style of Oscar winner Giuseppe Tornatore who also hails from Bagheria, the same town in Sicily where Guttuso comes from.

The offer by the TFF 70 is made even more valuable by the history of the festival which brings us two gifts: the wonderful unmissable monologue by Toni Servillo from Mario Martone's second film, the mid-length feature Rasoi; and the 4K restoration of Picnic at Hanging Rock, the masterpiece that made the Australian director Peter Weir famous almost 50 years ago, at the festival in Taormina.

For this edition, Marco Müller also developed a program with a broad cultural and geographical range, made up not only of films. Thanks to the commitment of the artistic director of the Fondazione Taormina Arte Sicilia, Gianna Fratta, an internationally renowned artist, a parallel initiative will take place together with the film festival: Projections – Suoni e parole prima del film, a performative format between music, theatre and multimedia events that offers, before the screenings at the Teatro Antico, performances linked to the world of cinema. In particular, we can mention the screening of Jean Epstein's documentary La Montagne Infidèle with live musical commentary by pianist Omar Sosa, the concert for the hundredth anniversary of Giacomo Puccini's death Tosca - Il ricatto sessuale, in which arias, duets and ensemble pieces from Puccini's masterpiece alternate with Gianna Fratta's own narration of the opera; Veniamo a quel paese, a performance of the soundtracks that Carlo Crivelli composed for the films by Ficarra and Picone, who will participate in the event; Note di celluloide, a tribute that the Ensemble 'Suoni del Sud' pays to the best of film music performing masterpieces by Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone, Nicola Piovani, Piero Piccioni. Finally, the play L'amore segreto di Ofelia by Steven Berkoff starring Chiara Francini and Andrea Argentieri and also a tribute to Maria Callas, Vissi d'arte. Vissi per Maria, which will take place between Taormina's Villa Comunale and the Teatro Antico.

The Taormina Film Festival’s 70th Edition will take place from the 12th to the 19th of July, 2024. To find out more, check out their website.