From the beginning to the 1990s
For most of the great post-war Italian filmmakers, Sicily is a crucial point of reference, a real favourite subject. Great tourist sites or forgotten villages, the places that serve as a backdrop for unforgettable scenes are legion. To see in priority: The Earth Trembles (1948, shot in Acitrezza with authentic Sicilian fishermen) and The Cheetah (1963) by Luchino Visconti. But also Stromboli, Land of God by Rossellini in 1950, with Ingrid Bergman. The island was also the setting for some great Italian comedies, such as Pietro Germi's successful film Divorce Italian style (1960), with Marcello Mastroianni. 1960 was also the year of the release of L'Avventura, a Franco-Italian film by Michelangelo Antonioni, the first part of a trilogy(The Night in 1961, and The Eclipse in 1962) which brought Italy into a true cinematographic modernity in the study of love relationships on the screen. Of the Sicilian cinema of the 1970s, we especially remember the filming of the first part of the mythical Godfather trilogy by Francis Ford Coppola in 1972. Part of the story - especially in the first and last films - takes place on the island, near the village of Corleone. From the 1980s onwards, Sicily saw the making of Kaos I (1984) and Kaos II (1999), Sicilian tales by the brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, inspired by Luigi Pirandello's short stories. In the same vein, Francesco Rosi's Forgetting Palermo (1990) is an adaptation of the novel by the writer Edmonde-Charles Roux.
Nowadays
At the dawn of the 2000s, Emanuele Crialese, a filmmaker attached to the Sicilian land, directed Respiro, which takes us to the shores of Lampedusa, a small island in southern Sicily. Crialese received a large number of awards, including the Grand Prix, the Audience Prize and the Young Critics' Prize at the International Critics' Week in Cannes in 2002. From the same director follow Nuovomondo (2006) and Terraferma (2012), dealing with the drama of illegal immigration in Lampedusa. The German director Wim Wenders released in 2008 Rendezvous in Palermo, which recounts the journey of a German in Sicily and his meeting with a young woman from Palermo. Giusepe Tornatore returned in 2009 with Baaria, which depicts the life of a Sicilian family over three generations. Tornatore, arguably the most famous of Sicilian directors, saw his career take off in 1988 with Cinema Paradiso, in which the inhabitants of Giancaldo, the film version of Tornatore's home village of Bagheria, participated. The film received critical acclaim and was awarded the Grand Prix du Jury at Cannes and the Oscar and Golden Globes for best foreign film. His most recent feature film was released in 2016 as La Corrispondenza starring Jeremy Irons and Olga Kurylenko. From the Sicilian 2010s, we also remember Palermo (2013, Emma Dante) and A Bigger Splash (2015, Luca Guadagnino) for its breathtaking views of Pantelleria. More recently, we note Sicilian Ghost Story (2017, Fabio Grassadino), opening film of the Critics' Week at the Cannes Film Festival. We can mention in 2020 the release of Il delitto Mattarella, by Aurelio Grimaldi: the true story of Piersanti Mattarella, president of Sicily assassinated by the mafia Cosa Nostra in the middle of the street in Palermo in 1980. And Le Sorelle Macaluso, by Emma Dante, the cross portrait of 5 sisters living in an apartment in Palermo.
