Silvana Mangano was an Italian film actress. She was one of a generation of thespians who arose from the neorealist movement, and went on to become a major female star, regarded as a sex symbol for the 1950s and '60s. She won the David di Donatello for Best Actress three times – for The Verona Trial (1963), The Witches (1967), and The Scientific Cardplayer (1973) – and the Nastro d'Argento for Best Actress twice.
Cinema Paradiso is a 1988 coming-of-age dramedy film written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore.
Valeria Golino is an Italian actress and film director. She is best known to English-language audiences for her roles in Rain Man, Big Top Pee-wee, and both films in the Hot Shots! franchise. In addition to David di Donatello, Nastro d'Argento, Ciak d'oro and Globo d'oro awards, she is one of four actresses to have twice won the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival.
Paolo Villaggio was an Italian actor, writer, director and comedian. He is noted for the characters he created with paradoxical and grotesque characteristics: Professor Kranz, the ultra-timid Giandomenico Fracchia, and the obsequious and meek accountant Ugo Fantozzi, perhaps the favourite character in Italian comedy. He wrote several books, usually of satirical character. He also acted in dramatic roles, and appeared in several movies.
Eraclio Petri, commonly known as Elio Petri, was an Italian film and theatre director, screenwriter and film critic. The Museum of Modern Art described him as "one of the preeminent political and social satirists of 1960s and early 1970s Italian cinema". His film Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion won the 1971 Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, and his subsequent film The Working Class Goes to Heaven received the Palme d'Or at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival.
Vittorio De Seta was an Italian cinema director and screenwriter, considered one of Italian cinema's great imaginative realists of the 1960s.
Ettore Scola was an Italian screenwriter and film director. He received a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film in 1978 for his film A Special Day and over the course of his film career was nominated for five Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.
Mariangela Caterina Melato, sometimes billed as Maria Angela Melato, was an Italian film and theatre actress. She is most remembered for her roles in films of director Lina Wertmüller, including The Seduction of Mimi (1972), Love and Anarchy (1973), and Swept Away (1974). In cinema, she also appeared in films of Claude Chabrol, Elio Petri and Vittorio De Sica, and on stage in productions by Dario Fo, Luchino Visconti and Luca Ronconi. Her roles in English-language films include the 1980 science fiction film Flash Gordon.
The David di Donatello Awards, named after Donatello's David, a symbolic statue of the Italian Renaissance, are film awards given out each year by the Accademia del Cinema Italiano. There are 26 award categories, as of 2023. The industry-voted awards are considered the Italian equivalent of the American Academy Awards.
Stefano Lelio Beniamino Accorsi is an Italian actor.
Milena Vukotic is an Italian former ballerina and a stage, television, and film actress.
Daniele Luchetti is an Italian film director, screenwriter and actor.
Matteo Garrone is an Italian filmmaker.
Andrea Crisanti was an Italian production designer and art director.
Paola Cortellesi is an Italian actress, film director, screenwriter and producer. She has starred in about 20 movies as well as a number of theatrical, television and radio shows. In 2023, she made her directorial debut with the black-and-white feminist comedy-drama There's Still Tomorrow, which received critical acclaim and became one of the highest-grossing films of all time in Italy.
Salvatore Leopoldo "Leo" Gullotta is an Italian actor, voice actor, comedian and writer. He became known for his role in Café Express (1980), and has won several David di Donatello awards, the first one being for his role in Giuseppe Tornatore's The Professor (1986).
Mario Amura is an Italian photographer and cinematographer.
Francesco Bruni is an Italian screenwriter and director.
Alice Torriani is an Italian film actor, author and screenwriter. She is notable for her portrayal of Andreina in Il Paradiso delle Signore directed by Monica Vullo and as the author of the novel L'altra Sete.
Giorgio Diritti is an Italian director and screenwriter.
