Premio Interprete del Presente 2023 goes to Fabrizio Gifuni

A very remarkable actor capable of original and moving analysis, revealing immensely human wounds and wrinkles. Embodying not only for the cinema and in memorable television series figures from recent and tragic Italian history such as Aldo Moro, Pope Paul VI, Franco Basaglia, Pippo Fava, Gifuni demonstrates these qualities also in his theatre work, exploring with profound dramaturgical impact and physical commitment works by 20th century giants such as Gadda and Pasolini often in creative synergy with his friend, director and muse Giuseppe Bertolucci. The calibre of his artistic exploration is clearly linked to his personal excellence in terms of acuity, irony and empathy.

He recently reached an artistic peak with his finely chiselled performance and impersonation of Aldo Moro, martyr of the State, in Marco Bellocchio’s masterpiece Esterno notte, for which he won both the David di Donatello Award and the Nastro d’Argento-Grandi Serie TV: inspired and revealing work that Gifuni later echoed in the role of the relentless papal inquisitor in Rapito directed by his now close friend Bellocchio. All this is in the wake of his aforementioned bio-historical performances as the politician De Gasperi, Pope Paul VI, the revolutionary Trieste psychiatrist Basaglia, and the sacrificial Sicilian journalist Fava, in important TV films directed by filmmakers such as Liliana Cavani, Fabrizio Costa, Marco Turco, and Daniele Vicari. Gifuni’s fine cinematic performances should also be remembered in Turco’s Vite in sospeso, Tavarelli’s Un amore, Giuseppe Bertolucci’s L’amore probabilmente, Marco Tullio Giordana’s La meglio gioventù and Romanzo di una strage, Davide Manuli’s Beket, Antonio Capuano’s L’amore buio, Edoardo Winspeare’s Galantuomini, and Paolo Virzì’s Il capitale umano, and his recent transformations in the action film La belva directed by Ludovico Di Martino and Sydney Sibilia’s comedy Mixed by Erry.

The ShorTS International Film Festival prize is thus awarded to a performer fully immersed in the present. Let us therefore expect from Gifuni further choices and narratives full of meaning, devoid of rhetoric, aware of the weight and freedom on which the elusive profession of actors plays.

Maurizio di Rienzo