Brava! Brava! – from Monticello to Cinecittà with roots in the Langa and Roero regions

On Sunday, November 15, 2026, at 5:00 PM, the Ferrero Foundation will host a conversation in its Auditorium between Giovanna Gagliardo, director and screenwriter, and Fabrizio Dividi, film critic and journalist. The conversation aims to recount an artistic journey spanning eras, languages, and cultural transformations, while preserving the ability to observe the world with curiosity and critical thinking. Giovanna Gagliardo has developed a research approach in which cinema and documentary are profoundly intertwined with Italian culture.

From her collaboration with the great Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó to her exploration of the female condition with Bellissime, her work has often chosen to give voice to stories, people, and events that deserve to be rediscovered. Her cinema is also a tool for investigating collective memory, history, and the contradictions of the present.

Winner of the 2026 Cesare Pavese Award, in recognition of the fascinating and rigorous documentary Il mestiere di vivere (2024) presented at the 42nd edition of the Turin Film Festival, Giovanna Gagliardo is currently working on a new documentary on the youth and Roman years of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, entitled Cent'anni di grazia.

Giovanna Gagliardo (Monticello d'Alba, 1941) began her professional career as a journalist. She was an editor at the Rome office of Il Giorno. For many years she collaborated on the third page of Il Messaggero and in the 1980s she continued her activity by collaborating with the cultural pages of La Repubblica and, later, with L'Espresso. She approached cinema as a screenwriter and assistant director for the great Hungarian filmmaker Miklós Jancsó, collaborating on titles such as The Pacifist (1970), Technique and Rite (1972), Rome Wants Caesar Again (1974) and Private Vices, Public Virtues (1976). She made her directorial debut in 1978 with Maternale, a psychological and symbolic reading of the mother-daughter relationship, which was followed in 1983 by the noir Via degli specchi. From the 1990s onwards, she devoted herself brilliantly to documentaries and, after Viva l'Italia (1995) and Che colpa abbiamo noi (1997), she returned to women's themes with Bellissime (2004) and Bellissime 2 (2006), a history of twentieth-century Italy reconstructed through a large gallery of women. After other documentaries that explore both past history and the complexity of the present, including 20 anni (2012), in 2024 she paid homage to Cesare Pavese with Il mestiere di vivere.

Fabrizio Dividi (Turin, 1968) is a film critic and author of documentaries dedicated to the memory and culture of cinema, including Sale per la capra (2012) and Venanzio Revolt. My first 80 years of cinema (2016). He writes about cinema for Corriere della Sera – Turin.