Knuchel Closes Pratt Trilogy With 'Hugo in Venice' — SkimNews
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- Knuchel's "Hugo in Venice" premieres out of competition at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 12, in a special screening jointly presented by La Biennale di Venezia, the International Critics' Week and the Giornate degli Autori.
- The film is the third and final installment of Knuchel's trilogy on Italian cartoonist Hugo Pratt, following "Hugo in Africa" (2009) and "Hugo in Argentina" (2021), and its premiere is timed ahead of the centennial of Pratt's birth in 2027.
- Knuchel's earlier Pratt films have a track record at Venice: "Hugo in Africa" won the Bisato d'Oro for best director in the Horizons section in 2009, and "Hugo in Argentina" screened in Venice Days in 2021.
- The documentary draws on previously unheard recorded conversations between Pratt and biographer Dominique Petitfaux, whose book of interviews supplies the film's title, and features Patrizia Zanotti, managing director of Cong SA (which has managed Pratt's rights since 1995), and writer Marco Steiner, who worked alongside Pratt in his final years.
- Knuchel argues Pratt effectively invented the graphic novel: his first long story "Una Ballata del Mare Salato" prompted an editor to coin the term "graphic novel" so the work could be shelved under novels rather than comics.
- "Hugo in Venice" is produced by Fiumi Film in co-production with Swiss public broadcaster RSI, and Knuchel frames Venice itself as a mirage rising from the lagoon, mirroring Pratt's psyche rather than his biography.
Why it matters: Knuchel's 20-year documentary trilogy on Hugo Pratt closes at Venice a year ahead of Pratt's 2027 centennial, and the film repositions Pratt as a literary figure who inspired the very term 'graphic novel.' Co-hosting by La Biennale, the International Critics' Week and the Giornate degli Autori gives the closing chapter institutional weight, with previously unheard Pratt-biographer recordings and restored '30s archive footage as its core materials.
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