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The Venice Film Festival will honor Oscar-winning Italian actor/director Roberto Benigni with its 2021 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.

Benigni, whose “Life Is Beautiful” – which he co-wrote, directed and starred in – won three Oscars in 1999, including best actor, recently returned to the big screen playing Geppetto in Matteo Garrone’s live-action adaptation of “Pinocchio.”

“Pinocchio,” which was a box office champ in Italy in 2019, has been recently released in the U.S. by Roadside Attractions and is nominated for 2021 Oscars in the best costume design and makeup and hairstyling categories.

Benigni’s last directorial effort is “The Tiger and the Snow,” in 2005, in which he also starred. In recent years the beloved Italian showman has been active with his stage adaptation of Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” which toured in Italy and around the world.

In praising Benigni Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera noted that “few artists have equaled his ability to combine explosive comic timing,...

Italian screenwriter, novelist and poet who formed a successful partnership with the film director Roberto Benigni

Although he was a respected novelist and poet, Vincenzo Cerami, who has died aged 72 after a long illness, was perhaps best known as a screenwriter, thanks to his long partnership with the director Roberto Benigni. The pair co-wrote six films and had their greatest success with La Vita è Bella (Life Is Beautiful, 1997), which starred Benigni as a Jewish internee in a concentration camp, desperately pretending to his young son that it is all a game. The film won three Oscars and had a further four nominations, including for best screenplay. "Knowing Vincenzo was a gift," said Benigni, "because he taught people's hearts to beat."

On their early films together, Cerami was not able to totally sublimate Benigni's excesses as an actor. Nevertheless, Il Piccolo Diavolo (The Little Devil, 1988), Johnny Stecchino (1991) and Il Mostro (The Monster,...

Do you know the worst awards show in the world? They are the David di Donatello -- sort of an Italian Academy Awards -- the only awards where the presenters talk more than the winners, where the hosts confuse one category for another, where the guests leave halfway through leaving noticeably empty seats. They are the only awards in the universe where an actress like Margherita Buy can win six times (and no, she's not the Italian Meryl Streep), where the Career Achievement recipient (this year, the screenwriter Vincenzo Cerami) is absent, where the Foreign Film honours are picked up by distributor representatives, and where the actual Best Italian Film of the year (Bertolucci's Me and You) goes home emptyhanded.Boring and embarrassing as usual, at least...

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Italian film director and screenwriter who established a new school of social-realist comedy

The Italian film director Mario Monicelli has died aged 95, after jumping out of a hospital window in Rome. Monicelli directed more than 60 films, most of which he co-wrote. He was best known for I Soliti Ignoti (Big Deal On Madonna Street, 1958), which was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign-language film. It was remade by Louis Malle as Crackers (1984) and turned into a Broadway musical, Big Deal, by Bob Fosse in 1986. Monicelli's original is one of the most internationally admired Italian comedies of the past 60 years.

Born in Viareggio, Tuscany, Monicelli was the son of a journalist, Tomaso Monicelli, who founded one of the earliest Italian film magazines. Tomaso killed himself in 1946. Mario studied at the universities of Milan and Pisa and took an early interest in films. With the future publisher Alberto Mondadori, he collaborated...

Clearly spending time nearly getting blown up in From Paris with Love hasn’t turned Jonathan Rhys-Meyers off to all things French, though for his next European adventure, he’s sticking with something a little more romantic, if still dangerous. The actor has signed on to the lead role in the adaptation of Albert Cohen’s novel Belle Du Seigneur.Glenio Bonder is behind the camera for the first time, directing the tale of a Jewish diplomat (Rhys-Meyers) who falls for, and starts an affair with, a married Swiss woman as World War Two kicks off. And his love interest? Model Natalia Vodianova, last seen in monstrous form providing the performance for Medusa in Clash of the Titans.Marianne Faithfull has also signed on to the movie, which has been co-written by James Dearden (no stranger to forbidden lust after his work on Fatal Attraction) and Life is Beautiful’s Vincenzo Cerami.

Deadline reports Jonathan Rhys-Meyer, Henry VIII of The Tudors, will play the lead in the World War II era love story, Belle du Seigneur, opposite model Natalia Vodianova, who recently played Medusa in Clash of the Titans.

First time film director, Glenio Bonder, who is best known for his commercial work, will helm the project, which begins shooting October 25.

Based on Albert Cohen’s bestselling French novel, the film centers on “Solal, Under-Secretary of the League of Nations, who risks his reputation over an obsessive love affair with the rebellious, bored wife of a pompous League official,” according to Publishers Weekly.

Penned by James Dearden (Fatal Attraction) and Vincenzo Cerami (Life Is Beautiful) the adaptation of the 992 page novel is guaranteed to take some dark turns.

Will you come out for Belle Du Seigneur?

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"The Tudors" star Jonathan Rhys-Meyers has joined the cast of the French romantic drama "Belle Du Seigneur" reports Deadline.

Based on Albert Cohen’s bestselling novel, Meyers will play a Jewish diplomat who gets into a passionate affair with a married Swiss woman (Russian supermodel Natalia Vodianova) on the eve of the Second World War. Marianne Faithfull also has a role.

Glenio Bonder makes his directing debut on the project which begins filming October 25th in Geneva before moving south to Italy.

James Dearden (Fatal Attraction) and Vincenzo Cerami (Life Is Beautiful) penned the script while Thierry de Navacelle, Jimmy de Brabant and Jean Luc Van Damme will produce.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers will play a Jewish diplomat who gets into a passionate affair with a married Swiss woman, played by Russian supermodel Natalia Vodianova (Clash of the Titans), on the eve of the Second World War. Marianne Faithfull also appears. First-time director Glenio Bonder starts filming October 25 on location in Geneva, Switzerland and then in Italy. James Dearden (Fatal Attraction) and Vincenzo Cerami (Life Is Beautiful) have written the script, based on Albert Cohen’s bestselling French novel. Bonder is a commercials director whose clients include Calvin Klein and British Airways. Thierry de Navacelle, Jimmy de Brabant (co-producer Girl With a Pearl Earring), with Jean Luc Van Damme (Goodbye Bafana) co-producing. Stealth Media Group, the Los Angeles and Brighton-based sales agency, is handling international distribution.