Italian producer and director Renzo Rossellini will be honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2023 Locarno Film Festival along with a Piazza Grande Second Screening of Federico Fellini’s La città delle donne (City of Women).
Artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival, Giona A. Nazzaro: “Film is a tool for learning about the world: Renzo Rossellini has taught that lesson unstintingly, becoming a pivotal figure in modern cinema. His own love of film came from his family and has stayed with him throughout his life. Gifted with infallible instincts and led by his passion, he has left a deep and lasting mark. Today, celebrating a man of the cinema such as Renzo Rossellini is a way of paying tribute to what is most dear to us in the cinema itself.”
Renzo Rossellini is the son of director Roberto Rossellini and costume designer, art director, Marcella De Marchis. He started working in France as assistant director to François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol. He then began a collaboration with his father Roberto, initially as assistant director and later as a producer, which lasted till 1977.
He founded and led two production companies, Gaumont Italia and Artisti Associati SpA, producing, financing, and distributing over one hundred films, including features by Federico Fellini (Prova d’orchestra [Orchestra Rehearsal], 1978; La città delle donne [City of Women], 1980; E la nave va [And the Ship Sails On], 1983), Michelangelo Antonioni (Identificazione di una donna [Identification of a Woman], 1982), Liliana Cavani (La pelle [The Skin], 1981), Joseph Losey (Don Giovanni, 1979), Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Querelle, 1982), Werner Herzog (Fitzcarraldo, 1982) and Francis Ford Coppola (The Cotton Club, 1984).
He has taught film production and history of European cinema at UCLA, at the State University in Salerno, II University in Naples, EICTV in Cuba; and at his Gaumont Film School and a Film School for the European Community, whose alumni include directors Daniele Luchetti, Giuseppe Piccioni, Antonello Grimaldi, and Valerio Jalongo, and producers such as Domenico Procacci.
Renzo Rossellini will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award on Thursday August 10, in Piazza Grande, will pay tribute to celebratedin Piazza Grande on Thursday 10 August, followed by a screening of La città delle donne (City of Women, Federico Fellini, 1980); and on Friday August 11, Rossellini will meet the Festival public at the Forum @Spazio Cinema.
The Lifetime Achievement Award was created in 2011. Previous winners have included leading figures from the movie-making world such as Harrison Ford (2011), Alain Delon (2012), Jacqueline Bisset (2013), Harvey Keitel (2016), Dario Argento (2021), and, in 2022, Matt Dillon.