Mirren to receive lifetime achievement award at Taormina Film Festival.
Dame Helen Mirren is to be the guest of honour at this year’s Taormina Film Festival in Sicily, where she will be presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award during a gala evening dedicated to the late Italian actress Anna Magnani.
The 72nd Taormina Film Festival will run from 10 to 14 June 2026.
Artistic director Tiziana Rocca said it was “an immense honour” to welcome Mirren to the festival, adding that her talent, elegance and career “perfectly embody the spirit” of the event, Deadline reports.
Rocca described presenting Mirren with the award on an evening honouring Magnani as creating “an ideal bridge between two icons of cinema, united by a unique interpretive power and a rare ability to move audiences.”
Highlights of Mirren’s five-decade career cited by the festival include her Oscar-winning performance in The Queen, as well as Gosford Park, Golda and the long-running television series Prime Suspect.
The celebration of Magnani will feature a screening in Taormina’s ancient open-air amphitheatre of a restored version of Luchino Visconti’s Bellissima, marking the 75th anniversary of the film’s release and Magnani’s award-winning lead performance.
Born in 1908, Magnani was one of the leading figures of 20th-century Roman cinema alongside Alberto Sordi and Aldo Fabrizi.
She was propelled into the international spotlight in 1945 for her role in Roberto Rossellini’s neorealist masterpiece Roma, città Aperta, in which she played Pina, killed by the occupying Nazi forces as she fought to protect her husband.
Magnani was the first Italian person to win an Academy Award, winning Best Actress for her English-speaking role as a widowed mother in Daniel Mann’s 1955 film The Rose Tattoo.
Established in 1955, the Taormina Film Festival is one of Italy’s most historic cinematic events, hosting prestigious international premieres and stars within the Teatro Antico, an ancient Greek theatre overlooking Mount Etna.
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