Article by Carlotta Profico
Translation by Alice Ivaldi Lessona
Ritratti di cinema explores cinema through the personal and analytical gaze of nine leading figures on the international scene: Jane Campion, Tim Burton, Ruben Östlund, Asghar Farhadi, Pablo Larraín, Damien Chazelle, Paul Schrader, Peter Greenaway and Martin Scorsese.
Thanks to the collaboration between the Torino Film Festival and The National Museum of Cinema, these great auteurs have come to the city over the last two years to inaugurate photographic exhibitions, hold masterclasses, and receive the Stella della Mole award. Written and directed by Paolo Civati and presented in the Zibaldone section of the 43rd Torino Film Festival, the documentary takes the form of a journey through the central themes of their cinematic poetics. The dialogues between Civati and the nine filmmakers reveal a heated debate on the roots of their vision, on the creative process and on the artistic identities that define them, as well as fundamental references to films such as 1900 and The Red Shoes. Their work appears, from time to time, as an expressive urgency or as a complex ensemble piece by professionals: a creative gesture that finds its fulfilment only in the encounter with the gaze of the audience.
The interviews, filmed in black and white to highlight the essential nature of the portrait, were shot in the Mole Antonelliana, where the shots of the exterior and of museum’s objects establish an ideal dialogue between the past and present of cinema. The music not only supports the dramaturgy, but also offers an empathetic point of view, while the editing – through bloopers, off-camera moments and post-credits scenes – reveals the human and everyday side of personalities that now belong to an almost mythical dimension.
Article published on “la Repubblica Torino” on November 26, 2025.