One of the best known Italian actors and directors – Michele Placido, famous for playing Corrado Cattani in the TV series La Piovra / The Octopus, is one of the most important guests of the anniversay edition of Transilvania International Film Festival.
Michele Placido will be present in Cluj-Napoca on Saturday evening, June 4, for the screening of his most important title as film director, – Vallanzasca - Angels of Evil / Vallanzasca – Gli Angeli del Male. The audience in Cluj will be able to meet Placido at Ursus Open Air - Piaţa Unirii, both at the start of the film, at 9.45 p.m., and after the screening, during a Q&A session moderated by Mihai Chirilov, the Artistic Director of the festival. Alongside Michele Placido, actress Monica Bîrlădeanu, one of the film's leading actresses, will also attend the Saturday evening screening. On the Ursus Open Air stage, Monica Bîrlădeanu will present the Italian actor with the TIFF Lifetime Achievement Award offered to an Outstanding Personality of the European Cinema.
The public and accredited press at TIFF 2011 will also be able to meet Michele Placido during an informal get-together, followed by an autograph signing session, on Sunday, June 5, 12.30 at TIFF Lounge in Unirii Square.
Michele Placido was born in 1946. He studied acting at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome and at The Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his debut as an actor in the play Midsummer's Night Dream in 1969. Two years later he started film work under directors such as Luigi Comencini, Mario Monicelli, Salvatore Samperi, Damiano Damiani, Francesco Rosi, Walerian Borowczyk, Marco Bellocchio and Carlo Lizzani. His first success came with the role of soldier Paolo Passeri in Marcia trionfale (1976, directed by Marco Bellocchio), for which he won a David di Donatello – the Italian film industry awards.
Two years later, Michele Placido won the Silver Bear for Best Actor award at the 29th Berlin International Film Festival for his role of the homosexual worker in ironical melodrama Ernesto (1978). He appeared in several TV movies in 1970s, but 1983 marked the beginning of his greatest television popularity when he played the lead as police investigator Corrado Cattani in the La Piovra series.
The action in Vallanzasca - Angels of Evil, the most recent film he directed, takes place in Italy, in the 1970s. A criminal by age 9, Renato Vallanzasca would grow up to become the country’s most notorious mobster before the age of 27. While Vallanzasca lived by his own professional code of honor – he claimed that he never ‘shot anyone in the back’ – he and his gang took out their enemies and wrested control of the Milan underworld with a string of robberies, kidnappings and murders. Arrested multiple times, his daring escapes from prison enraged the government, angered his rivals and fed his legend. The film received a warm welcome at Venice Film Festival in 2010.
