Italian filmmaker Paolo Taviani, whose gritty biopic "Padre Padrone" won the top Cannes Film Festival prize, has died aged 92, Rome mayor Roberto Gualtieri said Thursday, February 29. For more than three decades Taviani and his brother Vittorio formed one of cinema's greatest directorial duos.
"Paolo Taviani, a great maestro of Italian cinema, leaves us," Gualtieri said on X, adding the brothers "directed unforgettable, profound, committed films which entered into the collective imagination and the history of cinema."
Former Cannes president Gilles Jacob said Paolo Taviani was "one half of an enchanting duo". "Heirs to (Roberto) Rossellini with his elder brother Vittorio, a kind of grace touched their films of inimitable moral rigor and poetry," he said. "Padre Padrone" and 1982 fantasy war drama "The Night of the Shooting Stars" were miracles of strength and delicacy, he said. Another of the brothers' critically acclaimed films is 2012's "Caesar Must Die", for which they won the Golden Bear prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Taviani died in a clinic in Rome after suffering from a short illness, according to media reports. His wife and two children were at his bedside. Taviani's funeral would be celebrated on Monday.