Each year, The Fondazione wishes to contribute to produce a new piece of work by an invited artists.

The encounter with Manuel Maria Perrone and his work gave birth in 2023 to the desire of immortalizing, through a poetical film portait, our founder and great actress Claudia Cardinale. Manuel’s world widely investigates the themes of adoration and rituals and their relation to life and reality was the perfect starting point to approach the portrait of Claudia Cardinale.

Un Cardinale Donna was shot in Nemours in 2023 and has been produced in view of accompanying the ongoing retrospective, on Claudia Cardinale produced and promoted by Cinecittà. This retrospective was launched at MoMA in New York on the 3 to 21 February 2023, to then travel to Berkley, Paris and Frankfort.

In Un Cardinale Donna the director Manuel Maria Perrone, like a tightrope walker, walks on the fine line between Claudia’s two facets: the elderly woman she is today and the eternally young film icon. He accompanies Claudia in a ballet between memories of the past and the present, creating around her the crazy, circus-like vivacity of a film set.

Manuel Maria Perrone, is a film, radio and theater scriptwriter as well as a film director and performer. His works have traveled to the Quinzaine des réalisateurs in Cannes, to Villa Medici in Rome and Locarno film Festival. Currently he is preparing his first long feature film, L’Ultima Cena to be shot in 2025 starring Claudia Cardinale, Geraldine Chaplin, Milena Vukovik and Hanna Shygulla.