Quartet, Ginger & Rosa to bookend Torino Film Festival

Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut Quartet has been announced as the opening film of the 30th Torino Film Festival (TFF) on Nov 23.

This year’s edition, which closes with Sally Potter’s Ginger & Rosa on Dec 1, will feature 43 world premieres, 11 international premieres and 13 European premieres, as well as 81 Italian premieres. In total, the festival will screen 223 titles, including 70 first or second features.

As previously announced, Ken Loach will receive the festival’s Gran Premio Torino award at a ceremony on Nov 26, which will be followed by the Italian preview of his latest comedy The Angels’ Share. Italian screenwriter/director Ettore Scola will also receive the Gran Premio Torino award at this year’s edition on Dec 1.

Films in contention for the festival’s international feature film competition, open to first, second or third-time directors, include Mikael Marcimain’s Call Girl, Iveta Grófová’s Made in Ash, Craig Viveiros’ The Liability, Belmin Söylemez’s Present Tense and Scott Graham’s Shell. All 16 films in contention will receive their Italian premiere as part of the competitive strand. As previously announced, Paolo Sorrentino will head the international jury who will present four awards: Best Film (€20,000), Special Jury Prize (€8,000), Best Actress and Best Actor.

Other strands at this year’s festival include Festa Mobile (showcasing the most innovative films of the past year, including Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina and Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris’ Ruby Sparks), Confidential Report (the festival’s genre strand featuring the likes of Jennifer Lynch’s Chained, Ronnie Thompson & James Nunn’s Tower Block and Quentin Dupieux’s Wrong) and TFFdoc, with Julien Temple’s London - The Modern Babylon and Luca Magi’s Anita among those documentaries screening. TFFDoc will present three awards: Best Film internazionale.doc (€7,000), Best Film italiana.doc (€7,000), Best Debut Documentary (€3,000).

The festival will also celebrate its 30th year by screening the latest films from directors whose debut features were shown by the festival over the years, including Leos Carax’s Holy Motors and Pablo Larraín’s No.

For the fifth year, the TorinoFilmLab Meeting Event will take place during the festival from Nov 25-27, where 120 international professionals will be invited to attend the presentation of the projects picked from the TorinoFilmLab advanced courses, which have been held throughout the year. At the end of the three-day meeting, various Production Awards (from €50,000 to €200,000), an Audience Award (€30,000) the International Relations ARTE Prize (€6,000) and a Post Production Award will be granted.

American filmmaker Joseph Losey will be the focus of this year’s retrospective, with the festival screening all of his films and some of his advertising films and documentaries made during the 40s and 50s. The director’s widow Patricia Mohan Losey and his grandson Marek Losey will be in attendance.

For the full lineup of this year’s festival, visit the TFF website.