Italian film director Paolo Taviani, whose gritty biopic Padre Padrone won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, has died at the age of 92, Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri announced Thursday.
For more than 30 years, Taviani and his brother Vittorio formed one of cinema’s greatest directorial duos. Gualtieri: “Paolo Taviani, a great master of Italian cinema, has left us” said in X. Gualtieri added that the brothers “directed an unforgettable, profound and committed film that has etched its mark in the collective imagination and in the history of cinema.”
According to media reports, Taviani died at a clinic in Rome after a short illness. Taviani’s funeral was scheduled to be held on Monday, with his wife and two children at his bedside, Anasa news agency reported.
The Tavianis, along with Vittorio, who passed away in 2018, have been making political films together for more than half a century. Padre Padrone, set in Sardinia, won the Palme d’Or at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival. The film is an adaptation of Gavino Redda’s autobiographical novel about a young shepherd who escapes the tyranny of his father.
Former Cannes president Gilles Jacob told AFP News that Paolo Taviani was “one half of a fascinating duo”.
After the death of his brother in 2018, Paolo Taviani premiered the film independently. Leonora Addio, which was screened at the Berlinale Film Festival in 2022, is about the legacy of death and creative endeavor, and is based on an idea that the brothers came up with together. Despite Vittorio’s death, “he is still with me,” Taviani told AFP at the time.
He told how the brothers were inspired by the master of neorealism, Italian film director Roberto Rossellini. “Vittorio was 18 and I was 16 when we decided to do the film, because we saw Rossellini’s Paisan,” Taviani said. “We wanted to make movies in our lives, if they could change lives and reveal our truths.”
Jacob said that Paolo and Vittorio were “heirs of Rossellini”, adding that “a certain grace touched their films with unparalleled moral rigor and poetry.” Father Padre Padrone and the 1982 fantasy war drama Night of the Shooting Stars was a miracle of strength and sensitivity, Jacob added. The brothers’ other critically acclaimed film, 2012’s Caesar Must Die, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.
Taviani was born in San Miniato, Tuscany in 1931. His brothers’ father was an anti-fascist lawyer who developed an interest in social issues from an early age, which he translated onto the screen in works known for combining history, psychoanalysis, and lyricism.
His death “left a vacuum that cannot be filled not only in the world of cinema, but also in the hearts of all of us who share his origins and his love for this land,” said Tuscan governor Eugenio.・Jani said.
