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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, Feb. 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, the former Twitter.
The brothers “directed unforgettable, profound, committed films which entered into the collective imagination and the history of cinema,” Gualtieri said.
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, according to ANSA news agency, which said Taviani’s funeral would be celebrated on Monday.
Paolo and Vittorio, who died in 2018, made politically engaged films together for more than half a century.
“Padre Padrone,” set in Sardinia, won the Palme d’Or prize at the Cannes festival in 1977.
