Federico Fellino honoured at Venice film festival

Venice: A new biopic about late cult director Federico Fellini by his friend Ettore Scola, one of Italy’s greatest living film makers, received a standing ovation at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Friday.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano attended the showing of the film — a patchwork of archive footage of the great director at work, interviews with people who knew him and a dramatisation of his early years.

“I felt emotional. I knew Fellini,” Napolitano told reporters after the premiere, adding: “Fellini, like no other director, could bring together reality and imagination. He portrayed an Italian humanity.”

The film, which is timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Fellini’s death on October 31, 1993, is scheduled to come out in Italy next week.

The Oscar-winning film maker, who shot his first film in 1950, is most famous internationally for his 1960 classic La Dolce Vita starring Marcello Mastroianni.

Scola, 82, who is best known for his We All Loved Each Other So Much from 1974, cried as he talked about his late friend after the showing.

“If you see tears, it’s because after you get to 80, everything makes you cry, even a well-cooked steak,” he joked. “But if Fellini knew about this, he would be pissed off. He was always jolly and self-ironic.”