Actress Paola Cortellesi on Tuesday got Rome's top civic honour, the Lupa Capitolina (Capitoline She-Wolf), for her record-breaking directorial debut C'è Ancora Domani (There's Still Tomorrow) on domestic violence and hopes of female emancipation in postwar Rome.
Presenting the award to the Roman-born actress for a film that recently passed Life Is Beautiful in all-time box office takings, Mayor Roberto Gualtieri said "Paola Cortellesi loves Rome, and she succeeded in recounting our city in her film.
"Here is a democratic and political film. Paola Cortellesi carried out an extraordinary and very necessary operation.
"The reaction (to it) has been an emotional, intellectual, civic and democratic participation, and what it aroused is the mark of how necessary this film was".
Cortelesi, 50, previously mainly a comic TV and film actress and impressionist, replied: "I'm very honoured by the words that Mayor Gualtieri said about my work and that of my team, for what we have done in these years.
"I'm honoured because I'm a Roman and this is my city. And I thanks the inhabitants of Testaccio, the only quarter where I hadn't filmed until now. If I have managed to do something good it's thanks to the care with which my family brought me up." She concluded, to loud applause: "My mum is here, my father is no longer with us but as a Roman he'll be laughing it off with a "bella de papà" (daddy's darling in Roman dialect)".
C'e' Ancora Domani on December 29 surpassed the year's cult phenomenon Barbie as the highest-grossing film at the Italian box office in 2023.
The black-and-white film, telling the domestic drama of an abused housewife in post-war Rome and confronting issues of patriarchy and women's empowerment in the year Italian women got to vote for the first time, has now taken almost 33,00,000 euros, while Greta Gerwig's film starring Margot Robbie as the most famous fashion doll took 32,122,000 euros.
The Capri, Hollywood film fest also recently named Cortellesi 'European Filmmaker 2023' following the success of her film, while it has emerged that C'e' ancora domani had overtaken Roberto Benigni's Oscar winning classic Life Is Beautiful in fifth place in the all-time Italian box office standings for home-grown films, with the first four slots occupied by Puglia comic Ceccho Zalone's hits.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
