On Saturday, December 16, at 8.30 pm, American actor and director Eli Roth presented Thanksgiving (2023), a slasher movie that pays tribute to the classics of the genre while also making fierce criticism of untrammeled capitalism.
The projection was followed by a conversation between Eli Roth and Manlio Gomarasca, as well as by the screening of the film Pieces (1982) by Juan Piquer Simón.
The event was part of #Nocturna, exploring the world of genre cinema with the support of the magazine Nocturno.
BIOGRAPHY
Eli Roth made his name on the contemporary cinema scene at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival with Cabin Fever, which won great public acclaim and rapidly became a cult horror film. In 2005 he wrote, produced, and directed (with Quentin Tarantino as executive producer) the film Hostel; praised by critics, it cleaned up at the box office and led to the creation of a sequel, Hostel Part 2.
His partnership with Tarantino continued in the years that followed. In 2007 he directed a fake trailer for Grindhouse that became the feature film Thanksgiving in 2023. In 2009 he played Sergeant Donny Donowitz in Inglorious Basterds and directed Stolzder Nation at Tarantino’s request, a parody of Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda film. At the 2013 Toronto Film Festival he presented The Green Inferno, a film about cannibalism that caused great controversy; this was followed in 2015 by Knock Knock, a thriller starring Keanu Reeves and Lorenza Izzo that was well received at the Sundance Film Festival. Between 2015 and 2017 he hosted two popular television programs: Discovery Channel’s Shark Week and the late-night talk-show Shark After Dark.