Italian director Daniele Luchetti will be a special guest of this year's Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF), where he will receive the Special Award for Contribution to World Cinema.

Regarded as one of the most important contemporary Italian filmmakers, he will be celebrated in the 3x3 section, where the public will be able to watch three of his films: School, The Ties, and Trust. Luchetti will be present at the screening of Trust (Confidenza, 2024) on Saturday, June 15, at the Student's House of Culture.

Before making his debut with It's Happening Tomorrow (Domani accadrà), a comedy about two robbers who receive different chances at rehabilitation, Luchetti acted in several productions and was the assistant of Nanni Moretti, who then played the role of a corrupt minister who hires an idealistic spokesman in The Yes Man (Il portaborse, 1990). This political drama premiered in the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival and was considered prophetic for the "Mani Pulite" corruption scandal.

School (La Scuola, 1995), which presents the destinies of youngsters at a suburban high school, was his first adaptation of the works of the writer Domenico Starnone, who became his close collaborator. At a time when critics believed that Italian cinema had lost its vitality, Luchetti managed to contradict them with My Brother Is An Only Child (Mio fratello è figlio unico, 2007), a story about two brothers who couldn't be any more different, yet who love the same woman.

His most recent films are The Ties (Lacci, 2020, based on Domenico Starnone's novel of the same name), a drama about a marriage crisis that opened that year's Venice Film Festival, and Trust (Confidenza, 2024), whose script was penned by the same Starnone, while the music was signed by Thom Yorke, lead singer of Radiohead. Its lead role is played by Elio Germano, who also starred in My Brother Is An Only Child, and whose track record includes acting trophies at Cannes, the Berlinale, and the David di Donatello awards.

Luchetti also directed one season of the miniseries My Brilliant Friend (2022), based on Elena Ferrante's novels, and Raffa(2023), a miniseries about Italian pop legend Raffaella Carrà.

This year's TIFF takes place between June 14 and June 24 in Cluj-Napoca.

(Photo by Gianni Fiorito, courtesy of TIFF)

simona@romania-insider.com