It took place in the garden of the Peggy Guggenheim collection in Venice, on the Grand Canal, the delivery ceremony of the twenty -fourth edition of the Mimmo Rotella Foundation Prize, collateral event of the 82nd international exhibition of film art organized by the Venice Biennale. The recognition – established in 2001 by the will of Mimmo Rotella (Catanzaro 1918 – Milan 2006) – celebrates the fruitful relationship between the languages of cinema and visual arts. A tribute to the seventh art, which represented one of the fundamental themes in the imagination and poetics of the master of the décollage.
The Mimmo Rotella 2025 Foundation Award was awarded to the director Paolo Sorrentino, a central figure of contemporary cinema, author of an unmistakable language capable of combining the Italian cinematographic tradition with a personal and universal vision, in which introspection, irony, visionary gaze, and an aesthetic that constantly dialogue with the history of art, coexist. The prize was awarded for the consistency of an authorial path that has been able to give prestige to Italian cinema in the world and for the intensity with which grace proposes itself as an authentically original, problematic and poetic work capable of piging in front of our consciences.
The motivation of the prize
With grace, Paolo Sorrentino confirms his extraordinary ability to integrate narrative depth, visual intensity and refined aesthetic research. The film moves between reality and transcendence by facing the universal themes of faith, fate and human fragility with a sensitivity capable of intensely involving the viewer. The poetic and visionary gaze of the Neapolitan director is intertwined by the evocative force of images in a cinematographic language in constant dialogue with aesthetics and contemporary art. The artistic legacy of Mimmo Rotella and in particular of his décollages is highlighted in elements such as fragmentation, memory, reworking of the real intended as tools necessary to rethink the present and build new imaginary.
To deliver the prize – an original work by Maestro Mimmo Rotella – were Nicola Canal, president of the Mimmo Rotella Foundation, Gianvito Casadonte, artistic director of the prize, and representatives of the cultural institutions and the world of international cinema.
Since 2014 under the artistic direction of Gianvito Casadonte, the Mimmo Rotella Foundation Prize has seen among its insignificant protagonists of the caliber of Al Pacino, Michael Caine, Ai Weiwei, Willem Dafoe, Julian Schnabel, Hayao Miyazaki, Shirin Neshat and Mick Jagger. Among the Italians, figures who have been able to tell the country with an authentic and original look, such as Toni Servillo, Mario Martone, Marco Bellocchio and Ascanio Celestini. In 2024 the award was awarded to Iddu by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza.
The Mimmo Rotella Foundation Award is confirmed as a project in which art comes to life thanks to the light of cinema and cinema is left to be inspired by the visionary force of art, renewing every year a dialogue that remains deeply current, made possible by the intuition of the great artist.
In addition, this twenty -fourth edition of the Prize represents the start of the celebrations that the Mimmo Rotella Foundation will dedicate to the twenty years of the disappearance of the great Calabrian artist, which took place in 2006: starting from January 2026, a rich program of exhibitions curated by Alberto Fiz will start from Catanzaro and created by the Foundation in collaboration with numerous institutions and museums throughout the peninsula. More details will be announced in autumn during a dedicated press conference.