Inside the Glorious — and Troubled — History of Italy’s Taormina Film Festival

Ilaria Ravarino
·9 min read
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If location truly was everything, the Taormina Film Festival would be the biggest in the world.

Here on “Isola bella” (Sicilian for “beautiful island”) you have it all: The sun, the sea and sunsets that look CGI-ed in their beauty (one of the reasons The White Lotus picked the region as a backdrop for its latest season). Above it all, the volcano, Mount Etna, with its bursts of fire and ash adds drama to the proceedings. The landscape is palm trees and prickly pear cacti and all the colors of the Mediterranean. The air smells of basil. The festival screenings take place in the Teatro Antico amphitheater, one of the largest historic Greek theaters in all of Sicily.

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It’s easy to see why, back in 1955, organizers decided to set up a film festival here. First in the city of Messina, from 1957 on before moving to the nearby municipality of Taormina. And one look at the place explains why the stars have kept coming. Elizabeth Taylor and Marlene Dietrich, Sophia Loren, Cary Grant and Robert De Niro. This year’s crop (the 2023 Taormina festival runs through July 1) includes Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Mads Mikkelsen — who celebrated the Italian premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny in Taormina on Sunday — as well as Bella Thorne, Zoe Saldana and Amber Heard, here in her first official outing since her stormy divorce and very public legal wrangling with Johnny Depp, to promote her new independent movie In the Fire.

But there is a dark side to the Taormina festival: A troubled history of debt, corruption and bankruptcy, a legacy of stifling bureaucracy, political interference and behind-the-scene battles for succession that has frequently thrust the event into chaos.

Over the past 16 years, Taormina has had 13 artistic directors (to compare, the Venice Film Festival has had a total of two: Marco Müller and Alberto Barbera). The last decade has seen near-constant upheaval and internal power struggles, with the festival nearly collapsing more than once.

And this year’s event saw last-minute shuffling at the top, with directors Alessandra De Luca, Federico Pontiggia and Francesco Alò dropped in favor of two new bosses: co-artistic directors and executive directors Beatrice Venezi and Barrett Wissman. “This is year zero,” they told THR Roma. “With us, the Taormina Festival is reborn.” But reborn from what?

The “New” Taormina Film Festival

The two make an interesting pair. Venezi is an Italian classical conductor and composer, in a profession with few female stars. She is also a fervent supporter of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, elected in September to lead the country’s most far-right government in decades. Venezi has appeared on stage with Meloni at political rallies and endorsed her online.

Beatrice Venezi
Beatrice Venezi

Shortly before Meloni’s election, in August 2022, Venezi was named director of the Taormina Arte Foundation, the organization which runs the film festival. She received backing from Nello Musumeci, then the president of Sicily (the region provides half of the funding for the foundation, the other half comes from the municipality of Taormina) and is currently a minister in the Meloni government. The mayor of Taormina, Mario Bolognari, was not a fan of Venezi’s appointment and he threatened to drop the city’s support for the festival. He didn’t, but his successor, Cateno De Luca, who, like Bolognari is politically far to the left of Meloni, did. Taormina pulled out of the Taormina Arte Foundation just 10 days before this year’s festival.

For her co-artistic director, Venezi hand-picked Barrett Wissmann, a Texas entrepreneur, concert pianist and chairman of the classical events management group IGM Artists (the two run in similar classical musical circles). Wissmann has his own history. In 2009 he pleaded guilty for his role in a securities fraud case in which investment firms paid kickbacks to manage assets of the New York State pension fund. He served no jail time.

“I’m not here to judge Barrett as a person, but only on his artistic profile,” said Venezi. “He has put on a respectable program, and I’m pleased with it. I’m not one to pass judgment on him.”

Taormina's new co-artistic director Barrett Wissman (left) welcomes Amber Heard to the 2023 festival.
Taormina’s new co-artistic director Barrett Wissman (left) welcomes Amber Heard to the 2023 festival.

Arrivederci Taormina Competition

Wissman was a very late addition to the festival. He signed on just two-and-a-half months ago. It was too late, in fact, to secure world premieres for a competition lineup so the festival ditched the idea of having a competition at all for its 68th edition.

Ester Bonafede, superintendent of the Taormina Arte Foundation said regional elections in Sicily last October slowed down the process of approving the new festival management. She told THR she was “surprised that we [were able to] put together a festival in just two and a half months.”

That the organization of the Taormina festival was chaotic and last-minute was no surprise. The event has a history of disruption.

A Decade of Stars (and Chaos)

Back in 2012, the Taormina festival looked to be on the brink. The foundation’s public backers — at the time the province of Messina, the Taormina municipality and the Messina city council — were bust. Messina, with debts of $262 million (€240 million), was facing default. The festival’s artistic director, former Hollywood Reporter International Film Editor Deborah Young, stepped down after five years at the job, citing “incompatible views” with the festival’s oversight body and worries about the festival’s dwindling budget.

Agnus Dei, a communications company owned by public relations specialist Tiziana Rocca, stepped in to take over the running of the festival, with 90 percent of the funding coming from sponsorship and private sources.

“I did a completely private festival, financed by sponsors, with 10 percent public contribution,” Rocca tells THR. “I never had any money from the Region of Sicily, because at that time it was bankrupt. It was a struggle.”

But Rocca brought in the stars: The 2013 festival opened with the Italian premiere of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel with stars Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon and Russell Crowe in attendance. The 59th festival closed with Johnny Depp starrer The Lone Ranger.

The magic of Taormina itself, the Teatro Antico in particular, drew them in.

“There is not a director who hasn’t been moved by seeing his film screened in that setting,” Chiara Nicoletti, one of the festival’s executive board members between 2015 and 2017, tells THR. “It’s unique. Unforgettable. Magical.”

But the 2013 festival was also marked by tragedy. James Gandolfini was scheduled to be a guest of honor, but the actor died in Rome on his way to Taormina. “The news of his death arrived at eleven o’clock in the evening,” recalls Nicoletti, who was one of the festival organizers that year. “We arranged a last minutes screening of Romance & Cigarettes [John Turturro’s 2005 feature starring Gandolfini]. It was terribly tragic. Years later, John Turturro visited the festival and it closed the circle.”

In 2015, Rocca received some public support but the festival’s Taormina Arte Committee (the predecessor to the Taormina Arte Foundation), which officially holds the rights to the festival, remained in deep financial trouble, with its debt fluctuating between $3.3 million and $4.8 million (€3.3 million-€4.4 million). By 2016, when Tiziana Rocca’s contract expired, the Taormina Arte Committee was $5.5 million (€5 million) in the red.

Italian telco Videobank was picked to manage the 2017 fest, but Rocca, alleging she was unfairly left out of the bidding competition, filed a legal appeal to block the move. In April 2017, just two months before the festival, an Italian court ruled that neither Videobank nor Rocca could run Taormina. Plans for a blow-out festival — with Russell Crowe confirmed as jury president and Francis Ford Coppola set to attend to present the 45th anniversary of The Godfather at the Teatro Antico — were canceled.

At the last minute, the Taormina Arte Committee threw together a makeshift event, lasting just a few days, with no competition, no international premieres or talent, and a lineup consisting only of Sicilian directors.

Everything Changes (Again)

After the debacle of 2017, Videobank was allowed to run Taormina, paying the Taormina Arte Foundation $273,00 (€250,000) for the privilege, according to Videobank head Lino Chiechio. But the 2018 festival, under new directors Silvia Bizio and Gianvito Casadonte, was a more downbeat affair, with a more political line-up. Andrzej Jakimowski’s Once Upon a Time in November, a Polish social drama, won best film, It Will be Chaos, an HBO documentary on the global refugee crisis, took best director honors for Filippo Piscopo and Lorena Luciano.

For its 65th anniversary, in 2019, the Sicilian fest got back a bit of its star mojo: Danny Boyle’s Yesterday premiered at the Teatro, as did Sony’s Spiderman: Far From Home, and the VIP attendees list included Nicole Kidman, Octavia Spencer and Oliver Stone.

But it wouldn’t last. When COVID hit, Taromina was forced to go mostly digital for the 2020 event, and the financial problems at the festival become impossible to ignore. The Taormina Arte Committee was restructured, becoming the Taormina Arte Foundation, with new backers: The city of Messina was out, the Taormina municipality and the Sicilian regional government back in. That didn’t result in fiscal stability, however. Sicily, with a 50 percent stake in the foundation, had public debt of $946 million (€866 million).

This brings us to 2023 and “year zero” with Beatrice Venezi and Barrett Wissman. Videobank is out. The Taormina Arte Foundation, now entirely publicly funded, is fully in charge. The stars are back.

Taormina remains one of the most beautiful locations in the world. The Teatro Antico has lost none of its charms. But no one is betting on what the future of this storied festival will bring.

“I had to give up [on Taormina], I consider it a big loss,” says Videobank boss Chiechio. “Everyone here knows what is happening at that festival, but nobody intervenes. Taormina is one of the most beautiful festivals in the world, in a crazy location. But it’s a cursed land. Sometimes I really believe that. I hope, sooner or later, we’ll see some improvement.”

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