The editor of ‘Gladiator’ and ‘Black Hawk Down’, Pietro Scalia, will receive the Locarno’s Vision Award

Pietro Scalia, the two-time Academy Award-winning film editor known for his work with Ridley Scott (Gladiator, The Martin, Black Hawk Down), Olivier Stone (JFK) and Gus Van Sant (Hunting for goodwill), among others, will receive the Ticinomoda 2023 Vision Award from the Locarno international film festival. The award, a lifetime achievement award, is dedicated to creatives whose work “broadened the horizons of the cinematic image”.

Scalia will receive the award in Locarno on August 3 during a ceremony in the festival’s legendary Piazza Grande. Locarno will also screen two extraordinary films from Scalia’s career: Hunting for goodwill (1997) and Black Hawk Down (2001).

Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro said the Italian-American Scalia was “in the tradition of the great Hollywood editors who shaped the image of classic cinema and its subsequent transformations. (He) revolutionized the way we think about how each image is joined to the next. In his collaborations with Bernardo Bertolucci, Ridley Scott, Sam Raimi, Michael Bay and Gus Van Sant (among many, many others), Scalia has shown himself capable of both adhering to and reinventing the poetics and formal research of these authors. Scalia’s editing work has influenced entire generations of young directors, he has brought a new and decisive gaze in determining the rhythmic intervals and times necessary to link the images together. Pietro Scalia: an experimental genius of the gaze and the musicality of editing”.

Scalia won the Oscar for film editing JFK in 1992 and Black Hawk Down in 2002 and was nominated for Hunting for goodwill in 1998 and Gladiator in 2001. His work will soon be seen in FerrariMichael Mann’s highly anticipated drama about the legendary Italian automaker, starring Adam Driver, Shailene Woodley and Penélope Cruz.

The 76th Locarno International Film Festival takes place from August 2 to 12.