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In Messina on 18 and 19 June 2026 with Matteo Garrone, SDF Messina Foundation Award for Culture, the preview of the 20th edition of the SalinaDocFest will take place, founded and directed by Giovanna Taviani which will be held in Salina from 8 to 12 July 2026, dedicated to the theme ODYSSEY: ancient and contemporary journeys, sea crossings, the migrations of peoples and the imagination.
The two days in Messina will see the presence of Giovanna Taviani, the president of the association Giulia Giuffrè and the vice-president, Gaetano Calà. After the success of the first two editions of the SDF Messina Foundation Award for Culture, awarded in 2024 and 2025 to Giuseppe Fiorello and Elio Germano. Matteo Garrone, on June 18th at 9pm at the Lux cinema in Messina “Io Capitano”, his latest film nominated for an Oscar in 2024. The mayor of Messina Federico Basile and the president of the Messina Foundation for Culture Rosario Coppolino will intervene and present the award.
The program for June 18th includes the screening of Io Capitano (2024) at 10pm starring Seydou Sarr and Mamadou Kouassi with editing by Marco Spoletini and sound editing by Maricetta Lombardo. In the film Seydou is transfigured into Ulysses, the traveler par excellence, perennial guest of a middle earth, where everything is possible, even flying in the desert and experiencing reality as a metaphor. Garrone’s cinema crosses reality, transforming it into fairy tale and myth, making it an archetypal story.
“My passion for fairy tales, and for myths in general, dates back to my relationship with painting and my desire to venture into all the archetypes and labyrinths of the human condition. Fairy tales have always allowed me to take a journey into some existential themes that I wanted to explore and at the same time they gave me the opportunity to visually reinvent worlds. Matteo Garrone tells Giovanna Taviani in the interview in the festival catalog – the Odyssey is the journey par excellence of the hero who goes through a series of difficulties before reaching his goal. Uberto Pasolini asked me to direct his “Ithaca – The Return”, but I was busy with my film and I couldn’t accept. I haven’t seen the film yet but I have a lot of respect and sympathy for Uberto.
The program of the two days in Messina continues on the morning of June 19th with Matteo Garrone who, at the University of Messina – Dams at 9:30 / 11:30, will talk to students about his cinematographic journey in a masterclass entitled Behind the scenes of Matteo Garrone’s cinema – From Roman Summer to Io Capitano.
The Dams of Messina is part of the COSPECS department of the University of Messina, and the meeting will be followed by the professor of the Aesthetics of New Media and Visual Communication course Francesco Parisi. The masterclass focused on Behind the scenes of Matteo Garrone’s cinema, will be an opportunity for students to listen to the director’s story starting from his first documentary experiences up to the films that made him one of the most well-known and awarded Italian authors in the world.
A behind-the-scenes story on editing, on sound, on the cinematic construction of the journey of one of the greatest Italian directors in an image journey aimed at young people from Roman Summer to Gomorrah, First Love, The Embalmer, Dogman, Tale of Tales, Reality, Pinocchio, Io Capitano. Clips from the works will be screened, and students will be able to participate in a Q&A with the director.