Director Stefano Knuchel will premiere "A Longing to Be of No Use – Hugo in Venice" out of competition at the Venice Film Festival on 12 September, closing a 20-year trilogy about Italian cartoonist Hugo Pratt, best known for creating the Corto Maltese comic series. The film's release is timed ahead of the centenary of Pratt's birth in 2027, and matters as a culmination of Knuchel's long-running effort to document Pratt's life and legacy, drawing on newly surfaced archival material and testimony from those closest to the artist.

The special screening is jointly presented by La Biennale di Venezia, International Critics' Week and Giornate degli Autori, and follows two earlier instalments, "Hugo in Africa" (2009), which won the Bisato d'Oro for best director, and "Hugo in Argentina" (2021), shown in Venice Days. Produced by Fiumi Film with Swiss broadcaster RSI, the new film uses previously unheard recordings of conversations between Pratt and his biographer Dominique Petitfaux, and features contributions from Patrizia Zanotti, who has managed rights to Pratt's work since 1995, and writer Marco Steiner, a former collaborator who has continued the Corto Maltese series since Pratt's death.