Key Points

This marks the director’s return to Sicily, where he has family roots and where he has announced plans to shoot an ancient shipwreck documentary, reports variety.com.

The Sicilian cinema event will host a screening of a restored copy of Scorsese’s 1976 classic “Taxi Driver” in the fest’s 8,000-seat open-air ancient Greek amphitheater in the shadow of Sicily’s active Mount Etna volcano.

Fest guests over the past decades have included Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Steven Spielberg, Federico Fellini, Pedro Almodóvar and Tom Cruise.

“It is with immense pride and deep emotion that we welcome Martin Scorsese to the Taormina Film Festival,” marketing guru Tiziana Rocca said in a statement.

“His presence is truly a historic event, not only for our festival, but for the entire cultural landscape of Italy.”

Scorsese is much more than a filmmaker, he is a living legend, whose unique cinematic voice has explored the human soul, social complexity, and raw emotion with unmatched power and elegance,” Rocca continued.

“With this award, we celebrate not only his unparalleled artistic legacy, but also his tireless commitment to the preservation of cinema’s memory, the promotion of cinematic culture, and the universal power of storytelling.”

Scorsese last travelled to Sicily in October 2024 when he scouted locations for his doc, which takes its cue from the recent discovery in Sicilian waters of the wreck of a large sunken ship called Marausa 2 dating to the third century A.D.

He had visited the town of Polizzi Generosa, home of the Oscar-winning director’s paternal grandparents, Teresa and Francesco Scorsese, before they immigrated to New York at the turn of the last century.

The 71st edition of Taormina will commence from June 10 and conclude on June 14.

- IANS