Ennio

A celebratory, star-studded portrait of the late Ennio Morricone, maestro composer for such names as Sergio Leone, Terrence Malick, Brian De Palma and – this film’s own director – Giuseppe Tornatore.

Anchored by an in-depth interview with Morricone recorded shortly before his death in 2020, aged 91, this affectionate, career-spanning retrospective was crafted by his frequent collaborator, Cinema Paradiso director Tornatore (The Best Offer, MIFF 2013). Ennio takes us from the prolific composer’s earliest works in television commercials, pop song arrangements and avant-garde improvisations, through to his defining scores for Leone’s spaghetti westerns and onward to Hollywood – a career spanning six decades.

Tornatore skilfully weaves archival footage together with behind-the-scenes stories from filmmaker partners like Quentin Tarantino (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, MIFF 2019), Bernardo Bertolucci (The Conformist, MIFF 1971), Clint Eastwood (White Hunter, Black Heart, MIFF 1991) and Dario Argento (whose 1980 film Inferno screens at this year’s MIFF) as well as enthusiastic interviews with musician admirers like Hans Zimmer, Quincy Jones and Bruce Springsteen. But most important of all is the testimony of the man himself, who, despite having scored over 500 films, proves to have a near-encyclopaedic recall for the intimate details of composition, instrumentation and inspiration that lie behind his most famous themes.