"I am proud to take this award, it is the one I will love the most, it gives me great satisfaction": said Giovanna Ralli, who was awarded the "Gigi Proietti Lifetime Achievement Award", as part of "Umbria Cinema Festival "2022, the second edition of the festival organized by the Umbria Film Commission, the Umbria Region and the Municipality of Todi, which has been animating the Umbrian village since Friday 22 July.
The awards ceremony is scheduled for tonight in Todi.
The 87-year-old actress, already winner of two David di Donatello (including the career one in 2022) and two Nastri d'Argento, reached by telephone from ANSA in the hotel room in Todi, explains: "I knew Gigi very well and we have worked many times together. I consider him a great,
he loved theater very much and his Roman and his Romanity brought me closer to him.
We miss Gigi, we miss his irony, his humanity, his theater, he has given so much to all of us. "A further recognition therefore to Giovanna Ralli, after 70 years of career:" I started very early, at 14 " she recalls with a big laugh. In these seven decades she has been directed by almost all the greatest directors of Italian cinema (Monicelli, Scola, Rossellini, De Sica) and has also acted alongside actors such as Gassman, Fabrizi, Totò, Manfredi, Sordi, Tognazzi, Mastroianni. "Scola was wonderful" Ralli comments and then adds: "He loved the actors and entered into their souls, he was very polite and calmed us by managing to make us bring out the best". Sordi remembers him as "a true friend"
and with him "I had fun".
But with Mastroianni on the set "there was an extraordinary harmony".
"I was his wife, his girlfriend and even his mature lover" recalls the actress: "It was extraordinary because with him we did not act but interpret the character, which I have always done in my career".
Giovanna Ralli, guest of the Umbria Cinema Festival and in the past protagonist of all the most important film festivals, also talks about the reviews dedicated to the seventh art: "These moments are important for us actors, they bring cinema to life".
"Here in Todi then everything is beautiful and very well organized. In addition, I know Umbria well and I always come back here willingly.