Honorary Lifetime Achievement Awards

In its 39th edition, the Bolzano Film Festival Bozen, in collaboration with the Bolzano Tourist Board, is conferring the Honorary Lifetime Achievement Awards on Ottavia Piccolo and Ulrike Ottinger. The Honorary Awards of the 39th BOLZANO FILM FESTIVAL BOZEN are being presented in collaboration with the Bolzano Tourist Board.

Ottavia Piccolo
“We have the deepest admiration for Ottavia Piccolo. She remains an integral part of the history of Italian and European cinema, television and theatre. Since the start of her career at the age of eleven, she has left a lasting impression on everyone who has seen her perform. It is difficult to list all the directors and writers with whom she has worked over the course of more than sixty years. To name but a few: in theatre, Squarzina, Strehler and Ronconi; in cinema, Visconti, Bolognini and Sautet. On television, she played roles in series based on great literary classics, further boosting her already considerable popularity. In Bolzano, we are presenting a film of particular importance to her career: Metello by Mauro Bolognini, for which she won the Best Actress award at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival. We are also screening 7 minuti by Michele Placido from 2016. Ottavia’s work continues tirelessly, particularly on stage. Equally impressive, however, is her civic engagement and her active presence in the world: she is a critical voice. She comforts us in these often dark and painful years. Thank you, Ottavia!” – Vincenzo Bugno

Ulrike Ottinger
“Ulrike Ottinger never ceases to surprise us. Her artistic career is of inestimable richness and spans the history of the 20th and early 21st centuries. She moved from Germany to Paris, where she spent the formative years between the early and late 1960s. She then moved to West Berlin and continued a career that defies categorisation. As a gallery owner, photographer, set designer, and director of theatre, opera, documentary, hybrid and feature films, she has created an avant-garde Gesamtkunstwerk that can be described as multifacetedly queer across all genres. In her latest film, she offers us an entertaining (and funny) vampire story. Her decades of research are not only original but also rigorous. Her work as a documentary filmmaker takes us far beyond the borders of the West and brings us closer to things that go far beyond our taken-for-granted knowledge. Germany, Berlin, reunification. Certainly. But also – or perhaps above all – Asia. China, Japan, Mongolia. Africa. Ulrike Ottinger, a shaman? “Cinema is an animistic medium for me,” she often says. In Bolzano, we are presenting two films by Ulrike Ottinger: Paris Calligrammes from 2019, which traces the years in France that were fundamental to the director’s training, and Johanna D’Arc of Mongolia (1989).” - Vincenzo Bugno