Venice 2023: Caterina Murino to host opening and closing ceremonies

Actress Caterina Murino will host the opening and closing nights of the 80^th Venice International Film Festival 2023 within La Biennale di Venezia, directed by Alberto Barbera.

Caterina Murino will open the 80^th Venice Film Festival on the evening of Wednesday 30 August 2023, on the stage of Sala Grande (Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido) for the inauguration ceremony, and will host the closing ceremony on Saturday 9 September, when the winners of the Lions and other official prizes of the 80^th Venice Film Festival will be announced.

Caterina Murino, was born in Cagliari, Sardegna, Italy, and studied acting in the theater workshop at the Scuola di Cinema e Teatro di Francesca De Sapio in Italy. As a model she soon became a star of many advertising campaigns. Then, the late Italian film director Dino Risi selected her for a role in his TV fiction Le ragazze di Miss Italia (2002).

Her on-screen cinematic debut was for her role in the first film of the late Chilean writer and director Luis Sepulveda, Nowhere (2002). The film enjoyed critical acclaim in France. Several years later, Murino returned to French film screens in L’enquete corse (2004) opposite actors Christian Clavier and Jean Reno. Following the film’s success, Caterina began to receive many film proposals and worked between Italy and France.

But it was in 2006 that she became world-famous as the new 007 Bond Girl beside Daniel Craig, with her role as Solange in Casino Royale. She starred in the English comedy St. Trinian’s, before returning to Italy to shoot Non pensarci by Gianni Zanasi. She then went on to play the protagonist in Italian Director Pappi Corsicato’s Il seme della discordia  (2008) which was presented at the 65th Venice International Film Festival. She then juggled simultaneously roles on numerous Canadian and France sets, that led her to be casted for the made for television Franco-Canadian film XIII: The Conspiracy (2008) and AntiGang (2015) opposite actor Jean Reno. Later, she starred in a 2011 BBC miniseries, Zen, alongside co-star actor Rufus Sewell, which depicts the investigative story of protagonist the smart and honest police detective, Aurelio Zen, in Rome.

Murino then went on to star in the 2013 television series by Stéphane Giusti Odysseus. Upon her return to Italy, she starred in a number of film projects and leading roles including: a protagonist in the first film of Sardinian director, Cesare Furesi Who Will Save the Roses? (2017) and the latest  release of  director Renzo Martinelli: Ustica: The Missing Paper (2016).

As an versatile actress, in 2017, she starred in the American supernatural thriller The Voice in Stone, directed by Eric D. Howell, and Italian Director Alberto Rondalli’s Agadah. In 2018, she played the protagonist Benedetta in the Italian film Se son rose, directed by Leonardo Pieraccioni.

In 2020 Davide Livermore chose her to play the role of Triboulet in Le Roi s’amuse by Victor Hugo for the premiere at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan of A Riveder le Stelle…

She was also on screens in 2021 with the new film by Alex de la Iglesia Veneciafrenia and in a new film for Netflix by Roberto Capucci produced by Lotus Film entitled My Brother My Sister. She is currently filming The Opera! by Davide Livermore and Paolo Gep Cucco.