Luca Guadagnino Explains Why He Just Had to Produce Giovanni Tortorici’s Coming-of-Age Drama ‘Ketticè’ in a “Sterile” Italian Film Landscape
Director Luca Guadagnino used a press session at the 79th Locarno Film Festival to explain why he chose to produce "Ketticè," the second feature from his former assistant Giovanni Tortorici, arguing that Italy's film industry has become "sterile" and lacks a strong sense of language or life. He traced this decline to the rise of private television and Silvio Berlusconi's media empire, which he said hollowed out cinema, killed genre filmmaking and turned authorship into a narrow, self-serving pursuit rather than a broader creative tradition.
Set in Palermo in 2012, "Ketticè" follows a disaffected 16-year-old, Giulio, whose friendship with a self-assured peer named Ketty offers him an escape from his aimless life; the cast includes Salvatore Gallina, Rachele Testagrossa and Monica Bellucci, who plays Giulio's mother. Guadagnino, who was Tortorici's mentor and previously worked with him on "Diciannove," is credited as a producer on the film, which has cinematography by Camilla Cattabriga and editing by Marco Costa, with PiperPlay handling international sales.
- Guadagnino discussed producing protégé Giovanni Tortorici's new film at Locarno.
- He blamed Berlusconi-era private TV for making Italian cinema "sterile."
- "Ketticè" is a Palermo-set coming-of-age drama starring Monica Bellucci.
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Guadagnino is a well-known Italian director whose films include "Call Me by Your Name" and "Challengers." At the Locarno Film Festival, he spoke about producing "Ketticè," a new coming-of-age drama directed by Giovanni Tortorici, who worked as his assistant before making his own films, including "Diciannove." Guadagnino used the occasion to give his broader views on the state of Italian cinema, which he sees as having lost its creative vitality.
"Ketticè" is set in Palermo in 2012 and follows a teenage boy, Giulio, whose friendship with a more confident girl called Ketty helps him break out of his listless daily life. The cast includes Salvatore Gallina and Rachele Testagrossa in the lead roles, alongside Monica Bellucci, who plays Giulio's mother. Locarno is a major European festival where new and independent films, including ones like this, are often shown to critics and international buyers before wider release.
The story matters partly because of what it reveals about the relationship between an established filmmaker and a rising one he has mentored, and partly because of Guadagnino's wider argument: that Italy's film industry has become creatively "sterile" due to the long-term influence of commercial television and the media empire built by the late former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. That claim touches on a long-running debate in Italy about how television and cinema have shaped each other over the past few decades.