Banu Sıvacı’s “Hear the Yellow” has swept the main awards at this year’s Taormina Film Festival. The drama, which started its festival journey in Berlin back in February, was elected Best Film and Best Script at the Sicilian event, with its leads Süleyman Kadim Kabaali and  Selva Erdener winning Best Actor and Best Actress respectively. 

“Hear the Yellow” is Sıvacı’s sophomore effort. The drama follows young Suna, who returns to her small Turkish village to find it riven with cracks caused by draught. Her parental home is as fragile as relationships between the locals, but Suna persists in shining a light into the past’s dark corners. Sıvacı’s feature debut, “The Pigeon,” also premiered in Berlin, back in 2018. 

This year’s jury at Taormina was presided over by New Zealand director Jane Campion, alongside her “The Piano” lead Holly Hunter, costume designer Miyako Bellizzi, casting director Francine Maisler, breakout director Akinola Davies Jr. (“My Father’s Shadow”), Amazon MGM Studios’ head of global marketing Sue Kroll, and Italian actor/director Pietro Castellitto. Other major names to touch down in the Italian town include Russell Crowe, Helen Mirren, Connie Nielsen, Scott Eastwood, Aaron Paul, Nina Dobrev, Sam Nivola, Clive Owen and Gore Verbinski. 

The Campion-led jury also awarded Greta Scarano’s performance in Guido Chiesa’s “Piccolo Miracolo,” giving her a Best Actress award ex-aequo. Tut Nyuot won Best Emerging Actor for Ashley Walters’ prison drama “Animol,” while Berfin Sönmez won Best Emerging Actress for Ben Voit’s “Gropiusstadt Supernova.” 

The Taormina Youth Campus, which is composed of over three hundred students and 25 young jurors and held in collaboration with ANEC Sicilia and AGIS Sicilia, awarded Gore Verbinski’s genre-bending sci-fi “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” with this year’s Golden Cariddino. “Piccolo Miracolo” won a special mention. The ARCA award for Best Short Film went to Fabio Schifilliti’s “Fili Invisibili.” 

The 72nd edition of the star-studded Italian fete opened with the Italian premiere of HBO’s “House of the Dragon,” screened in the town’s imposing ancient Greek theatre. Other highlights include the world premiere of Derrick Borte’s “Bear Country” starring Russell Crowe, who also gave a masterclass where he spoke about his upcoming role in Chad Stahelski’s “Highlander” reboot. 

Other Taormina competition titles included dissident Iranian filmmaker Mahnaz Mohammadi’s potent drama “Roya” about an Iranian teacher detained in Tehran’s Evin prison and Michael Gallagher’s “The Leader,” starring Tim Blake Nelson and Vera Farmiga in the true story of the cult known as Heaven’s Gate that convinced dozens to abandon their lives and await evacuation from planet Earth. Gallagher and Blake Nelson spoke with Variety on the ground about the relevance of telling the story of the famed cult amidst growing political tensions worldwide. 

The 72nd Taormina Film Festival ran between June 10 and 14.