Toni Servillo awarded at the Ischia Film Award

Toni Servillo was awarded the Ischia Film Award last night.for having been able to create a gallery of characters who have identified and described our country".

On the stage of the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Aragonese Castle, holding in his hands the work of art in recycled iron depicting the Ischian fortress, an award that over the years has been given to excellences such as Benoît Jacquot, Carlo Verdone and Mario Monicelli, Servillo expressed his thanks as follows: “This award and this Festival are very similar to us, to what we do".

“Ariaferma”, according to Professor Gianni Canova, who moderated the meeting, “one of the most important films of the last seasons of Italian cinema“, was screened after the award ceremony.

The film, directed by Leonardo Di Costanzo, stars Servillo together with Silvio Orlando, both of whom were present at the evening.

Servillo expressed his esteem for his colleague as follows: “It was great to work with him; when you act with a great actor it's like when two players look at each other to score a goal. With great experience and intelligence as an actor he was able to give his apparently mild mask the coldness of the boss".

Orlando replies: “It was the birth of a friendship. Toni and I had never worked together, simply because we had never been asked. At first I thought he was questioning me, because over the years he has built up an authority that can seem like distance. Instead, on the set I found a clown, and this helped a lot by creating a climate of great sympathy, as if we had always made films together. I think that actors are clowns in the end, even if they find themselves making films of great depth”.

“Ariaferma”, awarded at the David di Donatello and the Nastri d'Argento, is set in an old 19th-century prison in disuse, located in an impervious and unspecified area of ​​the Italian territory; an opportunity for reflection perfectly in line with the heart of the Festival, the relationship between cinema and territory.

The evening also hosted the European premiere of the short film set in Campania, “Bagno al Largo”, preceded by a meeting with the director Luigi Russo, the screenwriter and actor Giuseppe De Cicco and the actor Gianmichele Areniello.

At Piazzale delle Armi, in the presence of director Giuseppe Carrieri, the short film “La città che verrà” was screened, in an absolute preview, followed by the feature film “Amuka” by Antonio Spanò, and finally the film “Benelli su Benelli”, introduced by a meeting with director Marta Miniucchi.

The Casa del Sole was the setting for the screenings of the Italian preview “Motvind” by Jon Vatne, “Lili alone” by Zou Jing, the short “The savior” by Soheila Pour Mohammadi, and finally the feature film “A blue flower” by Zrinko Ogresta. The Ischia Film Festival is realized under the High Patronage of the European Parliament, supported by the Film Commission Regione Campania and the Directorate General for Cinema and Audiovisual of the Ministry of Culture.