Terence Davies To Be Celebrated By Italy’s Turin Fest

ROME – Terence Davies will be celebrated with a career nod by Italy’s Turin Film Festival where a selection of the British auteur’s works, spanning from his pluriprized 1988 feature debut “Distant Voices, Still Lives” to his most recent drama, “Sunset Song,” will unspool.

Turin, which is Italy’s preeminent event dedicated to indie cinema, praised Davies as a “master at combining melancholy, cruelty, irony and desperation.” Davies is expected to make the trek to receive the fest’s Gran Premio Torino and introduce “Distant Voices.”

He will receive the award before the Italian premiere of “Sunset Song” (pictured) which recently bowed as a special presentation in Toronto.

“Sunset Song,” which is Davies seventh and most epically scaled feature, chronicles the struggle of a young woman, played by Agyness Deyn, to hold on to her farm in Northeast Scotland during World War I.

Guest director of this year’s 33rd edition of the fest is British director and musicvids pioneer Julien Temple and so far the accent seems to be on Britain.

As previously announced, Turin’s opener will be Sarah Gavron’s Meryl Streep-starrer “Suffragette,” inspired by the true events in Britain’s long travailed journey towards granting women the right to vote.

The fest will run November 20-28.

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