Two festivals, a season of lifetime achievement awards

The Italian film autumn opens with two events that, while different in format and ambition, share the same strategy: relying on lifetime achievement awards to build visibility and prestige.

The Festa del Cinema di Roma, now in its twenty-first edition under the artistic direction of Paola Malanga, runs from October 13 to 25, 2026 at the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone. The opening was entrusted to Susan Sarandon, who on October 13 received the Womenland Award 2026. The program lines up a series of heavyweight names from international cinema: Javier Bardem received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the hands of Paolo Sorrentino, presenting on that occasion El ser querido by Rodrigo Sorogoyen; Julianne Moore received the same recognition, while producer Tessa Ross was given the Industry Lifetime Achievement Award. Alongside the tributes, the Festa maintains a competitive component with the Progressive Cinema competition and the Grand Public, Freestyle and documentary sections, confirming an approach that tries to hold together the red carpet and artistic research.

A few weeks earlier, from September 26 to October 4, the Lucca Film Festival closed in Lucca, directed by Nicola Borrelli. Here too the focus was on recognition of film history: Liliana Cavani received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Cinema Astra on October 2, with screenings that brought Francesco d’Assisi and Francesco back to the big screen; the following day Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn picked up the Golden Panther Award, presenting the thriller Her Private Hell. The same festival featured the Carlo Cresto Dina retrospective, which brought renewed attention to Alice Rohrwacher through the screening of her debut feature, Corpo Celeste.

The comparison between the two events says something about how the Italian festival system tries to position itself between late September and late October. Rome works on an international scale and on the media appeal of established Hollywood stars, with a structure combining awards, competition and parallel sections aimed at different audiences. Lucca, more modest in size, builds its identity on the verticality of its tributes — a historic Italian director such as Cavani alongside an international cult author such as Winding Refn — and on retrospectives that reread already established authorial paths, such as Rohrwacher’s.

A limitation common to both reports should be noted: at present the reconstruction of both festivals comes from a single source, the press offices of the respective events, with no independent confirmation available. This is a relevant point for readers: information about guests, awards and programming remains, at the time of publication, that disseminated by the organizers themselves, without third-party verification.

It remains the case that the combination of lifetime achievement awards, retrospectives and competitive sections continues to be the main tool with which medium- and large-scale Italian festivals try to win international attention in an autumn calendar crowded with competing events in Europe and North America.