Tullio Kezich (17 September 1928 inTrieste – 17 August 2009 inRome) was anItalianscreenwriter and playwright, best known as thefilm critic forCorriere della Sera and for his biography of Italian directorFederico Fellini,Federico Fellini: His Life and Work.

Kezich's experience as a film critic began in 1941 as an adolescent reader for the Italian magazinesCinema andMovies. He started reviewing professionally for Radio Trieste in 1946. In the early 1950s, he became a film critic with theVenice Film Festival, a collaboration that would last for over 60 years, and with the cinema magazineSipario for which he later became editorial director between 1971-1974.

In 1982, he was a member of the jury at the34th Berlin International Film Festival.^[1]

During his long career as a film critic, he collaborated withSettimana Incom and the weekly magazinePanorama, as well as the newspapersLa Repubblica andCorriere della Sera. His film reviews forPanorama andCorriere della Sera were published in several volumes.

The author of numerous books on cinema, Kezich was also an actor and aplaywright whose work is still widely performed throughout Europe.

Kezich died in Rome after a long illness, a month before his 81st year.

In 1950, Kezich worked as production secretary onCuori senza frontiere byLuigi Zampa, in which he also had a small role alongside fellow film criticCallisto Cosulich.

In 1961, he participated as an actor inIl posto byErmanno Olmi. That same year, he co-founded 22 dicembre, a film company that producedIl terrorista by Gianfranco De Bosio andRoberto Rossellini’s film for television,L'età del ferro (The Iron Age). Kezich was the company's artistic director until it folded in 1965, the year he moved to Rome to work on the script and television production of Olmi’sI recuperanti. Various productions followed including television adaptations of work by Cervantes, Dostoevsky, and Italo Svevo.

In 1987, Kezich co-wrote the screenplay,La leggenda del santo bevitore (The Legend of the Holy Drinker), based on the novel byJoseph Roth. Directed byErmanno Olmi and starringRutger Hauer, the film won theGolden Lion at theVenice Film Festival in 1988.

In 2008, he was interviewed for the documentaryIl falso bugiardo (The False Liar) by Claudio Costa on Italian screenwriterLuciano Vincenzoni.

Recognized as a world specialist^[2] onFederico Fellini, his biography of the Italian director was published by Camunia in 1987 before it was revised and expanded and published byFeltrinelli in 2002. It was published in English asFederico Fellini: His Life and Work in 2006. The film historian and criticPeter Cowie wrote that the book surpassed all the other works on the director in English, French and Italian.^[2]

• Tullio Kezich atIMDb