Monica Bellucci Wields a Knife in Pyjamas: Inside Her Fierce Turn in Locarno's 'Ketticè'
Monica Bellucci showed up to the 79th Locarno Film Festival in pyjamas, slippers, and a knife — on screen, at least. Her role in Giovanni Tortorici's Ketticè, which had its world premiere on 9 August at Locarno's Teatro Kursaal, casts her as an eccentric aristocratic matron in Palermo, circa 2012, who has, in Bellucci's own words, "abandoned her femininity" (Variety).
The film, Tortorici's second feature, follows a teenage boy named Giulio who grows increasingly unmoored after meeting a spirited girl called Ketty. Bellucci plays the head of the family — a bitter, unhappy woman whose rage finds no outlet. She counterbalances her frustration by eating little cakes and screaming constantly. At one point she threatens her husband with a knife; nobody is scared of her. "She wouldn't have the courage to change her life," Bellucci told Variety.
A Variety review, published 8 August, described Bellucci's sneer in the film as "a thing of wonder" (Variety). Tortorici, speaking earlier that week, called her performance "a very intelligent, very realistic interpretation" (Variety).
Ketticè is produced by Luca Guadagnino — a name that carries serious weight in Italian cinema and beyond, and one that helped the film land a slot in the Concorso Internazionale, Locarno's main international competition. The section's top prize, the City of Locarno award, carries CHF 75,000. The film runs 107 minutes and is presented in DCP 4K colour (Locarno Film Festival).
Bellucci praised her younger co-stars, Salvatore Gallina and Rachele Testagrossa, for bringing "fully believable characters to life." She also spoke warmly of director Tortorici, saying he was "completely in control of the set" and had made "a personal, unique movie." A Reuters-distributed photograph from the festival, dated 8 August, captured Bellucci alongside Gallina and Rachele on the red carpet (Reuters). Bellucci posted a thank-you to the festival on her Instagram the following day (Instagram).
The Locarno role sits inside a busy 2026 for Bellucci, who has been working with a run of younger directors. She appeared in Léa Mysius's The Birthday Party, which premiered at Cannes and gave her a character who wants to live in isolation — a part unlike anything she had done before. She also worked this year with Maria Sole Tognazzi and with Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah.
What stands out in the Ketticè role is how far it sits from the glamour that defined Bellucci's earlier career. A woman in pyjamas holding a knife nobody takes seriously is a portrait of domestic impotence, not power — and Bellucci, by all accounts from the Piazza Grande, leans into every uncomfortable minute of it.
Ketticè screens in the Concorso Internazionale, competing for Locarno's top honours. The 79th edition of the festival runs through 15 August.
