Italian Cinema Today

As 2023 has drawn to a close, we look back at one event that honored a living legend. Organizers of the 80 th  edition of the Venice Film Festival, which ran August 30 – September 9, recognized several iconic artists. Tributes included a film retrospective dedicated to Gina Lollobrigida , who passed away in January.   One special recognition went to director Liliana Cavani , who was awarded a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Now 90 years old, Cavani was there to receive her award and later presented her new film, "L'ordine del tempo,” which premiered out of competition.    Actress Charlotte Rampling, who starred in Cavani’s 1974 devastating Holocaust drama, "Il portiere di notte" (The Night Porter) , presented Cavani with the award.    Charlotte Rampling in "The Night Porter" “From the early 1960s, Liliana Cavani has been forcing us to confront the beautiful, the ugly, and the unresolved. With her relentless questioning through her documentaries and fi...

(Updated January 12, 2023) Born in 1933 in Carpi near Modena, Liliana Cavani burst onto the filmmaking scene in the 1970s along with fellow Emilia Romagna natives  Bernardo Bertolucci , Pier Paolo Pasolini and Marco Bellocchio . Raised in a household that embraced the arts, Cavani went to art museums with her father, an architect, and to the movies with her mother, a film aficionado. She studied literature and philosophy at Bologna University in 1960 but decided a year later to head south to Rome to study filmmaking at the renowned Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. Success rapidly followed. Before her studies were finished, Cavani was hired there as the director of historical documentaries at RAI television. From there, she transitioned into feature films. Cavani's filmmaking style is fierce, unflinching, and no-holds-barred. Working with future stars Charlotte Rampling,  Helena Bonham Carter, and Mickey Rourke early in their careers, she was able to evoke a d...