Monica Vitti Stars in the Official Image for the Rome Film Festival 2026

As the press conference for the Festa del cinema di Roma approaches, where the program for its twenty-first edition, running from October 13 to 25, will be unveiled, the official image this year to be featured on posters and festival programs has been revealed. We are very pleased that a beautiful photograph of Monica Vitti, an unforgettable figure in our cinema who passed away in 2022, has been chosen. Produced by the Fondazione Cinema per Roma, chaired for the first time by Salvatore Nastasi, with artistic direction by Paola Malanga, the Festa honors the actress ninety-five years after her birth with a shot taken by Sergio Strizzi on the set of L’eclisse, a masterpiece by Michelangelo Antonioni, which earned the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1962. The film – the final part of the “trilogy of incommunicability” after L’avventura and La notte – remains one of the high points of the artistic partnership between Vitti and Antonioni: in the role of Vittoria, the leading character delivers a memorable performance that transformed the way actors in Italy approach their craft. In the photograph, Vitti is encircled by rigid geometries that echo those present in the EUR district, one of the film’s principal settings, and these shapes contribute to描 drawing a modern and antiseptic Rome, distinct from the city depicted in the era’s films. Thanks to an innovative acting style, rooted in the psychology of the character and reflecting contemporary alienation, the performer manages to merge seamlessly with the director’s visual universe.