One has to cut into the film

It is precisely because of your cuts, which move so sovereignly between the documents of history and fiction, which is often more real than reality, that my second critical association, when I see your films again, is with another Sergio Amidei Award winner: like your Iranian colleague Abbas Kiarostami in the film Close Up, you also manage to push the film to the point of touching the truth: the truth of the times, the truth of cinema, the truth of man,' said Stojan Pelko, head of programme of the European Capital of Culture, when presenting the award to director and screenwriter Marco Bellocchio.   Marco Bellocchio, a huge name in Italian and international cinema, is the winner of the Director’s prize, awarded at the 42nd International Best Film Screenplay Award “Sergio Amidei”. He was chosen, as film critic Paolo Mereghetti explains, because he proved to be a proved to be an innovator in the art and language of cinema, who knew how to transform the private into the prism and the core of the complex historical, social and political phenomena that have shaped Italy's history". He was also an 'inspirer and promoter of film culture' who 'innovated the language of cinema as an instrument of freedom, capable of making themes of profound socio-cultural political and religious resonance and topicality comprehensible to several generations'.   Film fans had the opportunity to see many of his films these days, including his latest Kidnapped (2023) on the day of the award ceremony. At the award ceremony, Stojan Pelko expressed his admiration for the films of "a master of psychoanalysis who tackles the big questions of our time". He said that without the film Fists in the Pocket he would not have understood the constraints of the bourgeois family, without My Mother's Smile he would not have understood the crosses of the Christian Church, his film China is Near helped him understand the banality of the political class, while Good Morning, Night helped him understand state terrorism. Finally, he added a comparison with the painter Lucio Fontana and his engravings on canvas, because »it is not enough to put images on canvas, you have to engrave them, to bring us, as Gilles Deleuze says, to the 'edge of chaos'«.   The winners of the Best Screenplay award were also announced. The prize was awarded last night to Gianni Amelio, Edoardo Petti and Federico Fava for Il signore delle formiche (The Lord of the Ants), "for the strength of the story, for the dryness devoid of any complacency with which the characters are portrayed, for the ability to arouse genuine emotion without ever taking easy shortcuts, for having written a story that remains within and leaves its mark," quoting the motivation.