The famous Polish director Krzysztof Zanussi will receive one special career award on the occasion of the Venice Film Festival. It will be delivered by Famiglia Cristiana, who will also celebrate the 90th anniversary of the newspaper and who interviewed him about his career and his life. “It is always a great joy to return to the Mostra, even if I regret a little that it does not happen because I have a new film to present”Jokes the director.
In 1981 Krzysztof Zanussi he made the film ‘From a distant country’ centered on the life of Pope John Paul II and, in 1997, he drew ‘Brother of our God’ from a play written in his youth by the Pope. For the Polish director, “Western culture is threatened by aphasia, a loss of vitality, e spirituality gives us the necessary strength to get out of this situation. I do not remember in the history of the world a civilization devoid of spirituality“. Heard by Famiglia Cristiana, who points out the incredible success that films focused on comic book superheroes have enjoyed in recent years, Zanussi replies that “after the long years of isolation and fear due to Covid, it is understandable that people want to have fun. But distraction is not enough to help us face the difficulties of life. We need much deeper stimuli and I think that cinema will be indispensable in this perspective“.
Krzysztof Zanussi and spirituality in cinema: the incredible encounter with Pope John Paul II
Krzysztof Zanussi got to know the Venice Film Festival and the city of Venice in the 1960s, when he called himself “a wandering student who widened his eyes in front of so much wonder”As he confesses to Famiglia Cristiana. From that edition “I go back often, not only for the Film Festival, of which I have been a member twice and once president of the Jury“. Among the most important encounters in Zanussi’s career and life is the one with Pope John Paul IIof which he remembers with admiration “the ability to focus all his attention on every person he met, the willingness to seek deep contact with her. It is a very rare gift in public figures, who always tend to be focused on themselves“.
Krzysztof Zanussi in his life also befriended Pupi Avati, met precisely at the Venice Film Festival in 1984, the year in which the Polish director obtained the Golden Lion with ‘The year of the quiet sun’. In 1970, Zanussi also met Pier Paolo Pasolini at the Mar de la Plata Festival in Argentina: “he used a language steeped in revolutionary rhetoric with which I, coming from a country where there was a Communist dictatorship, struggled to find affinities. And yet, behind that rind, there was a man gifted with great depth and for this reason I have a very beautiful memory of that encounter.“.
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Krzysztof Zanussi / “West without vitality, spirituality is needed. John Paul II …”