by Andrea Fagioli

The International Film Festival has awarded the "Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement" to Roberto Benigni, who will collect the award at the beginning of September, on the occasion of the 78th edition of the most important film festival in Italy. «My heart is filled with joy and gratitude. It is an immense honor to receive such high recognition for my work", commented the person directly involved.

The decision to award the Tuscan artist the prize was thus motivated by the director of the Exhibition, Alberto Barbera, in whose opinion «Roberto Benigni has established himself in the panorama of Italian entertainment as a reference figure, unprecedented and without equals, alternating his appearances on theater stages, film sets and television studios with surprising results from time to time. He has imposed himself on everyone by virtue of his exuberance and impetuosity, the generosity with which he gives himself to the public and the passionate joyfulness that constitutes perhaps the most original feature of his creations. With admirable eclecticism, without ever giving up being himself, he went from playing the role of one of the most extraordinary comic actors in the rich gallery of Italian performers, to that of a memorable director capable of making films with enormous popular impact, for ultimately transforming himself into the most appreciated interpreter and popularizer of Dante's Divine Comedy. Few artists have been able to merge his explosive comedy like him, often accompanied by irreverent satire, with admirable acting skills, at the service of great directors such as Federico Fellini, Matteo Garrone and Jim Jarmusch, as well as a compelling and refined literary exegete." .

Benigni was born on 27 October 1952 in Manciano la Misericordia, a hamlet of Castiglion Fiorentino, in the province of Arezzo, but spent his childhood and youth in Vergaio di Prato and then, at the age of twenty, moved to Rome. 

He achieved his first successes in avant-garde theater and later in television shows (L'altra Domenica, 1976, by Renzo Arbore, in the part of a hilarious film critic). He then brought one of his own shows to the big screen, Berlinguer I Love You (1977), directed by Giuseppe Bertolucci. He then came to the fore as the protagonist of Chiedo Asylum (1979) by Marco Ferreri and Il minestrone (1981) by Sergio Citti, and took part in La luna (1979) by Bernardo Bertolucci and Il pap'occhio (1980) by Renzo Arbore . He also established himself in American cinema acting, as Barbera recalled, with authors such as Jim Jarmusch (Daunbailò, 1986; Night Taxi Drivers, 1992; Coffee and Cigarettes, 2003), Blake Edwards (Son of the Pink Panther, 1993) and Woody Allen (To Rome with Love, 2012). He was finally the protagonist with Paolo Villaggio of Federico Fellini's film-testament, The Voice of the Moon (1990), playing the lunar and poetic Ivo.

In directing, Benigni made his debut with Tu mi turbi (1983) and together with Massimo Troisi directed the successful Non ci resta che cuore (1984), starting a series of films rewarded with great public success, such as The Little Devil ( 1988), together with Walter Matthau, the first of his films written with Vincenzo Cerami. Since 1987 he has always worked together with his wife Nicoletta Braschi, the female protagonist of all his films, with whom he then founded the «Melampo cinematographic» company in 1991, which has produced all their films since then: Johnny Stecchino (1991) , The Monster (1994), Life is Beautiful (1997), Pinocchio (2002) and Crouching Tiger in the Snow (2005).

With Life is Beautiful, which he wrote and directed, Benigni obtained the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1998, and in 1999, among the seven nominations received, he obtained the Oscar awards for best foreign film and best actor, in addition to the one for best music awarded to Nicola Piovani.

It is interesting to note how the second part of the film is essentially a hymn to the father figure through the character of Guido who, locked up in a Nazi concentration camp with his son Giosuè, manages to make the little boy believe, to avoid trauma, that it is all a game.

Benigni, who is not a father in reality, loves to be one in film fiction. Already in Tu mi turbi, in the episode Durante Cristo, in which in the role of the shepherd Benigno he baby-sits Baby Jesus, a decidedly paternal attitude can be felt, with an almost religious respect towards the son of his friends Giuseppe and Maria. An attitude that can also be found in some way towards Lillo, Johnny Stecchino's boy with Down syndrome.

Behind these interpretations there is perhaps a desire for paternity which is confirmed by having brought Collodi's Pinocchio to the screen twice. Among other things, the figure of Geppetto can be compared to that of the putative father par excellence, Saint Joseph, who coincidentally (but for Collodi it is not a coincidence) is a carpenter by trade. But there's more: Geppetto, like Giuseppe, feels like the "father" of that creature, but above all the privileged guardian of the growth of a child destined to grow up (no longer a puppet) and choose freedom. Without forgetting the beautiful recitation of the Our Father in The Tiger and the Snow, but not even that primordial popular theologian of Bozzone when in Berlinguer I love you he talks with his friend Cioni (Benigni) about the existence of the Eternal Father:

"God exists".

"Why?".

"Because yes. You see Cioni, the bricklayer built the house. But who built the bricklayer?

«The bricklayer's father».

«And who built the bricklayer's father?».

«The bricklayer's father's father».

"Certainly. And the father of the father of the bricklayer built it, the father of the father of the father built it, and on and on until the father of the first bricklayer. But who built the first bricklayer's first father? God".

«Nooo…».

"Yup".

«And God who built it?».

«God… Don't worry…».

Benigni will face many other theological levels in studying and interpreting the Divine Comedy, demonstrating extraordinary qualities of high dissemination, which he will be able to replicate also by addressing the Ten Commandments and the Italian Constitution, receiving great acclaim from the public and critics, so much so being nominated in 2005, by the then President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic and receiving ten Honorary degrees as well as numerous awards and recognitions throughout the world.

On the occasion of this year's Dantedì, the seventh centenary of Dante's death, Benigni also recited the XXV Canto of Paradise live on television from the Salone dei Corazzieri at the Quirinale, in the presence of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella and the Minister of Culture Dario Franceschini .