Tortorici's 'Ketticè' Debuts at Locarno With Bellucci as Aristocratic
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- Giovanni Tortorici premiered his second feature "Ketticè" in competition at the Locarno Film Festival, a coming-of-age drama set in 2012 Palermo that grew out of a screenplay he wrote around age 22
- Monica Bellucci is among the film's few professional actors, playing Giulio's mother — an upper-class Sicilian matron Tortorici modeled on real women he described as "pretty eccentric and even slightly violent" in private
- Rachele Testagrossa and Salvatore Gallina were street-cast in the lead roles of working-class Ketty (related to a Mafia member) and aristocratic Giulio, who bond over buying pot from a Palermo housing-project dealer
- Luca Guadagnino produced both of Tortorici's features and acts as a Socratic-style "psychoanalyst," Tortorici said, drawing ideas out of the director rather than dictating choices
- Tortorici frames 2012 Palermo as "marked by political stagnation, cultural numbness and the first pervasive impact of social media," a backdrop for teens' "search for freedom, away from the judging eye of the adult world"
Why it matters: The film marks Bellucci's continued return to Italian arthouse work and Guadagnino's deepening role as a producer-mentor beyond his own directing career. For Locarno programmers, the selection signals continued trust in Tortorici after his Venice Horizons debut "Diciannove" — betting that a 30-year-old street-cast social-realist film can hold its own against bigger industry titles.
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