TORONTO – For years the Torino and Rome Film Festivals have jockeyed with each other for the title of “second biggest festival” in Italy, behind Venice’s Biennale Cinema. While Rome’s festival was founded in 2006, twenty-four years after Torino’s inaugural event, the sheer aura of Rome’s host venue – Parco della Musica – and the Ancient city’s ability to attract international stars afford Rome a clear advantage. Yet Torino’s festival organizers continue to offer filmmakers attractive programs, arguably more intriguing than Rome’s – and this year is no different. 

The 42nd edition of Torino’s Film Festival will open with Ron Howard’s Eden, a thriller and true story set in the 1930s – about European escapees who attempt to live on an Island in the Galapagos. The film stars Ana de Armas, Sydney Sweeny, Vanessa Kirby and Jude Law. But the more anticipated film, at least where fan and media buzz are concerned, is the off-beat Marlon Brando biopic starring a remarkably transformed Billy Zane as two-time Oscar Winner. Titled Waltzing with Brando, the film is directed and co-written by Bill Fishman and highlights a brief but pivotal window in Brando’s professional life, when he was filming The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris.

According to the filmmakers however, the film doesn’t centre on Brando’s film work but rather a building project in his beloved Tahitian Island of Tetiaroa. The story goes that Architect Bernard Judge, whose memoir the film is based on, met Brando during filming in the 70s. The two shared ideas and Brando convinced Judge to construct what would be the world’s first ecological retreat on the Tahitian island.

Today, the resort is known as “The Brando”, and is one of the most luxurious resorts anywhere in the world, with nightly rates from $3000. Judge, known from then on for his environmentally conscious designs, went on to cement his reputation as an innovator in the field. Amidst all that, the Architect and Brando forged a friendship and even lived together for a stint on the South Pacific Island, supplying Judge plenty of fodder for his 2011 Memoir.

“The tone of the movie is…it’s not your average biopic, it’s not a cradle-to-grave story”, said Billy Zane in a recent Entertainment Weekly interview. “It’s a five-year period, and a unique friendship between his architect and him, trying to figure out sustainable design in the late sixties and early seventies in Tahiti. It’s curiously a really great lens on a figure, as opposed to trying to tell a whole lifetime”.

Waltzing with Brando hasn’t yet secured or announced its theatrical release, but if pre-screening buzz is anything to go on, a distribution deal should be right around the corner. Photos of Zane in character as Brando have set film lovers alight with enthusiasm, and talk of the actor’s incredible likeness to Brando and strong performance already has people talking about an Oscar nomination for the Titanic film icon. “You won’t believe it, he is possessed by Marlon Brando”, says Torino Festival Director Giulio Base.

Images courtesy of Filmin’ Tahiti Production        

Massimo Volpe is a filmmaker and freelance writer from Toronto: he writes reviews of Italian films/content on Netflix