Il desiderio di essere inutile – Hugo a Venezia premieres worldwide at the Venice Film Festival

From left: Alberto Barbera (Artistic Director of the Venice International Film Festival), Vittoria Fiumi (producer), Stefano Knuchel (director), Patrizia Zanotti (Cong SA – Hugo Pratt Art Properties), Pietrangelo Buttafuoco (President of La Biennale di Venezia), Fabrizio Paladini (journalist), Marco Steiner (writer), Beatrice Fiorentino (Artistic Director of the International Film Critics' Week) and Gaia Furrer (Artistic Director of Giornate degli Autori).

On Saturday 12 September, as part of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, Il desiderio di essere inutile – Hugo a Venezia celebrated its world premiere. The new film by Stefano Knuchel is produced by Fiumi Film and also supported by the Ticino Film Commission.

Presented as a special event, the documentary received a very warm welcome from the audience and has already drawn its first reviews in the specialised press, both in Italy and in Switzerland.

The screening also stood out for its format. The film was presented in the presence of the Festival's Artistic Director Alberto Barbera and the President of La Biennale di Venezia Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, together with Beatrice Fiorentino, Artistic Director of the International Film Critics' Week, and Gaia Furrer, Artistic Director of Giornate degli Autori. According to the production, this coming together of the three strands of the Venice event is unprecedented.

The film completes a body of work developed over twenty years and made up of three documentaries, each exploring a key moment and place in Hugo Pratt's life and imagination. The presentation of the trilogy in Venice is an ideal prelude to the celebrations marking the centenary of the birth of Corto Maltese's creator in 2027.

The film was also featured in several media outlets during the Festival. In an interview by the news agency Keystone-ATS, published on blue News, the Ticino-born director talked about Pratt's ties to Switzerland, where the comic artist spent his last years in Grandvaux, and about water as the common thread of the documentary, rendered through "a poetics of the image that captures many nuances". FilmTv described the film as the final chapter of a journey that "does not seek to reconstruct a biography, but to draw closer to the origin of an imaginary world". The US trade magazine Variety also interviewed Knuchel, noting that the documentary is built on previously unreleased recordings of conversations between Pratt and his biographer Dominique Petitfaux.

The film is scheduled for release in Swiss cinemas in the first half of 2027. Talks are under way for the film's international path, both on the festival circuit and in terms of distribution.