Taormina Film Festival, 72th edition, the little festival with a global voice

Planet Claire
Jun 23
7 min read

Major film festivals measure their prestige in hundreds of screenings, dozens of venues, and vast, sprawling programmes. For more than seventy years, however, Taormina has continued to rely on the extraordinary charm of the Sicilian town itself and on its ability to attract major international personalities.

The 72nd edition of the Taormina Film Festival, held from 10 to 14 June 2026, once again confirmed this peculiar identity. It remains a relatively small festival, with a limited number of screenings and a modest selection of films, yet this is offset by high-profile guests and a media resonance that few European events of comparable size can claim.

Taormina possesses an advantage that no other festival can match. The Sicilian town offers one of the Mediterranean’s most spectacular settings, suspended between the Ionian Sea and Mount Etna, while the Ancient Theatre remains the symbolic heart of the festival. For more than 2,200 years this amphitheatre has hosted performances and spectacles of every kind: a remarkable cultural continuity that makes each screening feel like something more than a simple cinematic event.

The festival opened with a screening of Sandokan, a 2025 RAI Cinema production presented as a tribute to its star, Can Yaman. The Turkish actor appeared in all his commanding presence, greeted by crowds of admirers quite literally beside themselves with excitement. It was a reception reminiscent of the great eras of international stardom, turning the red carpet into a popular event.

Among the most eagerly anticipated events was the premiere presentation of the third season of House of the Dragon (2026), the hugely successful British fantasy series that enjoys an impressive following across the globe. The screening attracted fans from several European countries, further confirming how increasingly porous the boundary between cinema and television has become.

The Power and Ambiguity of The Leader

Among the competition titles, one of the most compelling works was The Leader by American director Michael Gallagher, starring Tim Blake Nelson and Vera Farmiga. The film chronicles the rise and consolidation of power of a charismatic community leader, or more accurately, a cult leader, within Heaven’s Gate, whose utopian project gradually evolves into a structure that becomes increasingly opaque, manipulative and dangerously destructive.

Gallagher reconstructs a true story from North American history, carefully avoiding both bare moral condemnation and sensationalist scandal-mongering. His interest lies in observing the psychological and social mechanisms through which consensus is formed. What matters is to follow: "to follow" is precisely what his devotees, and ultimately his victims, seek. The direction is rigorous and gripping. Tim Blake Nelson, one of the most intelligent actors of his generation, delivers the most complex performances of his career, creating a character who constantly oscillates between sincerity and calculation, idealism and narcissism. He repeatedly reshapes the philosophy he imparts to his followers in an arbitrary and deeply unsettling manner. Vera Farmiga provides a sophisticated counterpoint, delivering a performance built upon subtlety and remarkable emotional control. Once again, independent American cinema demonstrates its ability to tackle difficult subjects with intelligence and restraint.

Piccolo Miracolo: The Pitfalls of Sentimental Rhetoric

Far less convincing is Piccolo Miracolo by Guido Chiesa, also presented in competition as a world premiere. Starring Marco D’Amore and Greta Scarano, the film explores themes of family, social inequality, class divisions and the hope of redemption through a narrative carefully constructed to elicit emotional engagement from its audience. Yet it is precisely this relentless pursuit of emotion that becomes its principal weakness.

The screenplay insists upon its most moving moments, accumulating situations and dialogue that often verge on the mawkish. Emotional appeal takes precedence over character complexity, leaving the protagonists trapped within predictable patterns. Greta Scarano delivers a generous and professional performance, but Marco D’Amore appears confined to an essentially single interpretative register. The same intense gaze, the same dramatic inflection, the same emotional posture accompany him from scene to scene, reinforcing an expressive immobility that critics have frequently noted beyond this particular role. The result is undoubtedly a film animated by good intentions, yet one that ultimately fails to shine.

Tornatore and the Praise of Entrepreneurial Kindness

Among the special events, Giuseppe Tornatore’s documentary Brunello the Gentle Visionary (Italy, 2025), commissioned by Brunello Cucinelli himself, generated considerable curiosity.

More than a straightforward corporate biography, the film emerges as an elegy to the Italian self-made entrepreneur. Tornatore presents the Umbrian businessman through elegant, evocative imagery and a narrative that privileges cultural vision before economic success. The project is inevitably celebratory and occasionally borders on hagiography.Nevertheless, the director’s craftsmanship succeeds in lending rhythm and cinematic dignity to material that might otherwise have remained little more than a promotional exercise. What emerges is a portrait of humanistic capitalism, one of the defining narratives of contemporary Italy.

Russell Crowe and the Hell Unleashed in Taormina: Fine Genre Cinema

Enthusiasm also surrounded the world première of Bear Country by Derrick Borte, a 2026 American thriller starring Russell Crowe. The film will be released in Italian cinemas on 26 August 2026 under the title La Vendetta Perfetta – Bear Country.

One particularly entertaining moment occurred when Crowe, welcomed with a standing ovation, chose to thank the audience with a speech delivered entirely in Italian. The Italian had clearly been prepared, carefully read and rehearsed, but for precisely that reason it was received with warmth and affection. The Australian actor concluded with the line everyone had been waiting for: “At my signal, unleash hell!”, the famous phrase spoken by Maximus Decimus Meridius in Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000). The Ancient Theatre erupted into thunderous applause for a line etched into cinema’s collective memory. Crowe’s presence represented one of the festival’s strongest media moments. Bear Country tells, with conviction and energy, the story of Manco Kapak, an Albanian immigrant in the United States who owns a Los Angeles nightclub. Having built his fortune on the fringes of legality, laundering money for drug cartels and maintaining dangerous connections with the criminal underworld, Manco now dreams of escape. He wants to sell the club, settle his accounts with the past, and live peacefully with the woman he loves. A robbery disrupts his plans, attracting the attention of criminals, debtors and mysterious prospective buyers. Manco finds himself dragged into a spiral of violence and betrayal from which there appears to be no escape. Russell Crowe proves the ideal protagonist for a story about weary men, missed opportunities and final attempts at redemption. He is neither a classic gangster nor a redeemed hero, but rather a mature man who realises too late the cost of his choices and desperately attempts to purchase a peace that fate seems unwilling to grant him. Crowe brings all of his experience to the role, avoiding the shortcuts of the invincible action hero and instead imbuing the character with an almost Shakespearean melancholy. He moves effortlessly between irony, brutality and vulnerability. Aaron Paul, best known as Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad, one of the finest television series ever produced, delivers a fully realised performance as an accidental villain. Derrick Borte crafts a crime film with a very personal voice, suspended between thriller, black comedy and existential reflection. The narrative unfolds at a brisk pace, weaving together action, deception and negotiation within a cleverly structured plot that maintains tension until the final sequence. Some moments are intentionally excessive, and certain narrative choices favour entertainment over plausibility, but it is precisely this lightness that prevents the story from descending into the bleak fatalism that characterises much contemporary crime cinema. Bear Country is a thoroughly engaging story populated by eccentric characters and driven by the charisma of a leading actor who appears to be enjoying every moment of the role. The result is an absorbing and entertaining thriller whose narrative elegance never becomes pretentious.

I Wish You All the Best: A Coming-of-Age Story of Contemporary Fragility

Among the festival’s international titles, I Wish You All the Best (2024) marks the directorial debut of Tommy Dorfman, adapting Mason Deaver’s novel and entrusting the central role to Corey Fogelmanis, whose delicate and effective performance anchors the film.

The story follows Ben De Backer, a non-binary teenager who, after coming out, is expelled from home by deeply religious and conservative parents. Ben moves in with an older sister from whom they have long been estranged, attempting to rebuild a viable everyday life through a new school, new friendships and an identity still in the process of formation. The encounter with Nathan (played by Miles Gutierrez-Riley), an empathetic and spontaneous classmate, introduces an emotional dimension that finally allows Ben to exist without masks or concealment. Dorfman constructs a coming-of-age narrative focused on subtle emotional consequences: silent pain, shame and the struggle to occupy one’s place in the world. The direction is clean and at times almost televisual in its transparency, yet sustained by a sincere emotional commitment to its characters. Corey Fogelmanis carries the film through a restrained performance built upon micro-expressions and a constant vulnerability that becomes the true narrative centre of the work. Around him, a strong supporting cast, including Alexandra Daddario as the protective elder sister Hannah, creates a credible human ecosystem within a tender and inclusive film. At its core, the film is a message about "how one survives emotional exclusion" without necessarily transforming it into tragedy. In this respect, Dorfman’s approach feels both coherent and contemporary: it is a sincere and valuable debut that wisely avoids sensationalism.

A Distinguished Jury

The jury was chaired by New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion, an authoritative and sophisticated presence, alongside figures drawn from a variety of international cinematic traditions.

Among the festival’s notable encounters were Dame Helen Mirren; Clive Owen, elegant and measured as ever; Aaron Paul, present alongside Russell Crowe; Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres; Scott Eastwood, son of the legendary Clint Eastwood; director Gore Verbinski; British actor Toby Jones; and the many cast members and filmmakers behind the works presented during the festival.

In an increasingly crowded and competitive festival landscape, Taormina continues to occupy a singular position. It is neither the largest festival nor the most influential in market terms. Instead, it remains a place where the millennia-old history of a theatre, the charm of an extraordinary town and the ever-renewed magic of cinema converge. For five days, once again, it seemed as though those ancient stones continued to do what they have done for twenty-two centuries: welcome stories and present them to the world.