From 3rd August to 1st September 2024, audiences are invited to attend the cycle “Extraordinary Lives”, seventeen films that reconstruct the public and private lives of unique personalities who have made the history of art, culture and politics.
The programme presents the portraits of extraordinary artists: they include painters Vincent Van Gogh (seen through the eyes of filmmaker Julian Schnabel) and Frida Kahlo (as told by Julie Tayor), writers Pamela Lyndon Travers (at the centre of Saving Mr. Banks by John Lee Hancock) and Truman Capote (in the film by Bennett Miller), director Alfred Hitchock (in the cinematic narrative by Sacha Gervasi), actor and author Eduardo Scarpetta (in the film by Mario Martone), musicians Freddie Mercury (in Bohemian Rhapsody by Bryan Singer) and Ennio Morricone (in the documentary by Giuseppe Tornatore).
Many are the Italian and international political figures, close ups within the cycle “Extraordinary Lives”: they include Queens Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II of England in the reconstructions of Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth) and Stephen Frears (The Queen), and English Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (in Iron Lady by Phyllida Lloyd). Giulio Andreotti is the protagonist of Il divo by Paolo Sorrentino, Bettino Craxi in Hammamet by Gianni Amelio, while Enrico Mattei is at the centre of the story told by Francesco Rosi.
The series closes with the profiles of the boxer Jake LaMotta (Raging Bull by Martin Scorsese) and Tommaso Buscetta, a member of the Mafia and informer as told by Marco Bellocchio in Il traditore. Finally in Francesco director Liliana Cavani explores the life of the Saint from Assisi, a religious man and poet, one of the pioneers of the Italian literary tradition.