Skip to main content
Home The Festival Petri Award

Petri Award

The cinematographic tradition of the Porretta Cinema Association seems to us the best way to pay homage to the figure of Elio Petri with the institution of an award that is not limited to the commemoration and remembrance, albeit necessary, of the great director’s work.

Porretta Cinema intends to avail itself of an inter-professional film jury capable of recognising and honouring a contemporary work in which the legacy of Elio’s authorial voice is evident, but not necessarily explicit, without neglecting his very important work as a writer for the cinema. Space will therefore be given above all to those cultural products that stand out for their themes of social and political criticism in line with Petri’s cinema.

Therefore, the objectives of the Elio Petri Award can be described as follows:

  • to promote and support film culture, with a focus on products that express creative freedom, stylistic originality, innovation and experimentation;
  • to stimulate concrete and open communication on issues of social and political criticism in line with Petri’s cinema;
  • to promote the enhancement and preservation of Elio Petri’s cinematographic and audiovisual heritage;
  • to disseminate, also thanks to the wide appeal of the award and of the related events, the cultural legacy of Petri’s cinematography to new generations
  • to promote events celebrating the filmmaker Elio Petri;

For this purpose, eminent interlocutors, such as the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, were involved and the author’s family in the person of Paola Pegoraro Petri was a part of the initiative from the outset.

It is quite clear that such an important and ambitious project in the national film scene cannot do without the support and patronage of the MIBAC.

In the 2019 edition of the Porretta Terme Film Festival, to pay homage to the first edition of the Award, a photographic exhibition dedicated to Elio Petri was set up during the days of the Festival, realised in collaboration with the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematorgafica and the Cineteca Nazionale.