Turin is preparing for a busy end to November. The 44th Torino Film Festival runs from 24 November to 2 December 2026, with Giulio Base directing for a third consecutive year and around 120 titles across competitive and non-competitive sections. Hollywood names, European auteurs and a major tribute to Marilyn Monroe give this edition a distinctly glamorous edge.
Travolta opens, Anderson closes
John Travolta is the headline guest of the opening night at the Teatro Regio. He will receive the Stella della Mole, the festival’s career award shaped like the twelve-point star that crowns the Mole Antonelliana, home of Turin’s National Cinema Museum. He is also bringing his directorial debut, Propeller: One-Way Night Coach, and appears in Roland Joffé’s November 1963, a drama about the Kennedy assassination told from the angle of American organised crime, which opens the festival.
Pamela Anderson takes centre stage on the closing evening. Her performance in Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl earned her a Golden Globe nomination, and her recent return to comedy alongside Liam Neeson in The Naked Gun has kept her in the spotlight. Twelve Stella della Mole awards are planned in total, with Isabelle Huppert, Fanny Ardant, Andy Garcia, Mira Sorvino, Luc Besson, Stephen Frears, Margarethe von Trotta and Josh Safdie among the honoured guests.
A centenary tribute to Marilyn
Marking 100 years since Marilyn Monroe’s birth, the festival has built a 24-film retrospective around her. Alongside classics such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot, the programme includes films about her, from My Week with Marilyn and the documentary Love, Marilyn to Andrew Dominik’s Blonde and Pier Paolo Pasolini and Giovanni Guareschi’s La Rabbia. The organisers present Monroe as a symbol of an edition with a strong focus on women in cinema: three women chair the juries — Francesca Archibugi, Stefania Casini and Chiara Francini — and ten women directors feature in the feature and short film sections.
Italian cinema has a strong presence too. The main competition includes Ernesto Maria Censori’s L’ora più bella and Stefano Grasso’s debut Il primo giorno di vita di Leonardo Revelli, figlio unico, starring Valerio Mastandrea and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi.
Red-carpet style, Turin edition
Marilyn’s screen wardrobe still shapes how we think about evening glamour: a statement pair of earrings, a fine necklace at the collarbone and a compact handbag or shoulder bag held close. For festival evenings in a cold northern Italian November, a structured leather piece from our men’s bags works just as well for the screenings that follow dinner.
Sources: Vanity Fair Italia; Variety; Variety (Marilyn retrospective); Cinematografo; Torino Film Festival.
