Discover the highlights in tomorrow’s programme!

Cinema Modernissimo – 10.45am, 4.15pm and 7pm
Let’s talk about cinema: Cristina Comencini, Terry Gilliam and Angela Allen at the festival
The guests of Il Cinema Ritrovato establish a direct link to the magical images we see on the big screen. Director, author and playwright Cristina Comencini will introduce Incompreso, one of the symbols of her father Luigi’s ability to direct children and recount childhood. The film will be accompanied by a video from an unexpected fan, Isabelle Huppert. From the intimate humanity of Comencini (whose investigative report for television I bambini e noi we are also screening) to the fanciful exaggerations from the imagination of director Terry Gilliam: the ex-member of Monty Python will hold an unmissable Cinema Lesson, where he will discuss the epic adventures of his Don Quixotesque cinema. However, it is not only directors who make cinema history: Angela Allen, the famous script supervisor, worked with directors of the calibre of Ken Russell, Roman Polanski, John Frankenheimer, Franco Zeffirelli and John Huston. She will reconstruct for us the eventful production of the Huston classic The African Queen, as well as present a teaser for the documentary – still a work in progress – that David Thompson is making about her extraordinary life.

Cinema Europa – 8.30pm and 10.15pm |  Cinema Arlecchino – 9.30pm |  Piazza Maggiore – 9.45pm | Piazzetta Pasolini – 10pm
Joker, Jerry and the others…
Room for comedy at Il Cinema Ritrovato. Beginning with the book of the day, Joker scatenato. Il lato oscuro della comicità (Feltrinelli, 2025), presented by author Guido Vitiello and Emiliano Morreale. The volume tells the story of our time through comedy. A cynical and sarcastic sense of humour has taken over public discourse today. Guided by the emblematic figure of the Joker, Vitiello investigates “the dark side of farce” and the inescapable link between comedy and violence. A more light-hearted sort of laughter with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in the Howard Hawks’ screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby and the irresistible duo of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin in the caramelised Technicolor of Artists and Models. Gregory Monro will also present Chaplin et les Temps Modernes, la voie du silence, his documentary which recounts how Charlie Chaplin, the genius of silent comedy, adapted to sound.

Cinema Arlecchino – 11.15am | Auditorium – DAMSLab – 2.30pm | Piazzetta Pasolini – 7pm | Cinema Modernissimo  – 10pm
How about an evening at the pictures?
The evening at Il Cinema Ritrovato holds some unique moments in store for us, starting with the double bill scheduled for Piazza Maggiore: the screening of Five Easy Pieces – a films that symbolised New Hollywood, starring the eternally experimental Jack Nicholson – will be preceded by The Three Bears, an animated adaptation of the celebrated fairy tale. In Piazzetta Pier Pasolini, the screening of ’A santanotte will be enriched by live musical accompaniment, recreating the viewing experience of spectators of silent cinema. The possibilities don’t end there, however, because the evening of Wednesday 25 June will also feature the underground cult classic Pink Narcissus – which will be at the centre of a restoration meeting on Thursday 26 June –, the hyper-realist post-punk thriller Diva, the anti-capitalist musical Hallelujah, I’m a Bum and, finally, Café Flesh, a surprising fresco on the production mechanisms of pornography.

Sala Mastroianni – 2.30pm, 6.30pm and 7.15pm
Century of Cinema: 1905 and Albert Samama Chikli
Between Light and Dark, from the cinema of 120 years ago. Films exhale the air of their time and help us to understand the era in which they were made: like the French ones made during the period of political conflict that preceded the law on the separation of Church and State, or the comedies that reinforced widespread stereotypes through ridicule. They can also give rise to highly contradictory representations: such as those of reactionary America and modern America, as portrayed by Edwin S. Porter. Staying in the same year at the start of the last century, but allowing ourselves to be transported to Tunis, on the trail of the Cinémato-Chikli screenings, which were organised by Albert Samama Chikli, the pioneer of Tunisian cinema, a brilliant filmmaker, photographer, technophile and inventor, to whom a dense and fascinating programme of restorations is also dedicated.

Sala Scorsese – 6.20pm
Masks and Music: the films of Willi Forst
The once celebrated career of Willi Forst has today fallen almost into oblivion. The Austrian director who allowed music to play a central role in his productions was one of the few filmmakers active in 1930s Germany to keep his work free from any obvious contamination by National Socialist ideology. The section dedicated to him opens with Maskerade, his second work and the one that best testifies to his spirit and style. The high watermark of that most typically Austrian cinema genre – the so-called “Viennese film” – it is an irresistible romantic intrigue, enhanced by highly-controlled performances and the elegant photography of Franz Planer, who later collaborated with Max Ophüls and Nicholas Ray.

Recovered and Restored
There are 125 of them over the nine days of the festival, but we can never get enough. Naturally, they are the films of the Recovered and Restored section. From Bertrand Tavernier’s directorial debut L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, based on a novel by Georges Simenon, to the wholly original Esterina, Carlo Lizzani’s road movie about a changing Italy in the late 1950s. From the shorts made between 1931 and 1945 by the extraordinary experimental filmmakers Franciszka and Stefan Themerson to Doña Herlinda y su hijo, the first gay Mexican film to gain international recognition. From Sterne, one of the most important anti-fascist films by DEFA, which deals with the guilt and responsibility of the Germans in the Holocaust, to Die Rose von Stambul, an adaptation of the famous Viennese operetta by Leo Fall. There are also lots of big names to introduce the screenings: Thierry Frémeaux, Steve Della Casa, Bruno Mestdagh, Daniel Bird, Hervé Pichard, Sawako Ogawa and Ivan Trujillo.

Sala Scorsese – 9.15am and 2.15pm
Into the fog of Norden noir
Our journey into the fog and disquiet of Norden noir continues with two appointments that explore the points of contacts between Nordic noir and Hollywood noir. Døden er et kjærtegn represents a triple debut: not only was it Edith Carlmar’s directorial debut, it is also considered the first Norwegian noir and, above all, it was the first film shot in Norway to be directed by a woman. Influenced by Double Indemnity and other Hollywood noirs that reached Europe in the post-war period, it contains femmes fatales, flashbacks, suggestive music, contrasting lighting and night scenes: elements of the genre that we also find in Flicka och hyacinter, a melodrama with deep shadows and an investigative mechanism reminiscent of Citizen Kane.