Bella Thorne, Adriana Lima, John Landis — Deadline Studio – Deadline

The Taormina Film Festival kicked off its 2023 edition on June 23 with a lineup that included the Italian premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny which brought out stars Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Mads Mikkelsen, and the Amber Heard-starring In the Fire directed by Conor Allyn. (Read about Heard’s exclusive interview with Deadline here.) It also features a short-film program curated by Bella Thorne, who is premiering her own short film Paint Her Red.

Other European premieres on tap at Taormina include Eva Vik’s Serpentine, starring supermodel Barbara Palvin. Another supermodel, Adriana Lima, is in town with FIFA: A Love Letter to Rwanda by Craig Goodwill, in which she appears and also executive produced. Later in the festival, Italian artist Marco Perego’s debut feature The Absence of Eden will world premiere with co-stars Zoe Saldaña, Garrett Hedlund and Adria Arjona joining Perego.

RELATED: Taormina Film Festival 2023 Photo Gallery: Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Amber Heard & More

Deadline is covering the festival and conducting interviews in its Deadline Studio. Among the guests who stopped by for photos and a chat were John Landis and Abel Ferrara, in town as part of festival retrospectives of their works; Thorne; Lima; producers Andrea Iervolino and Monika Bacardi; Allyn; Maram Taibah;  and more.

RELATED: Deadline’s Complete Coverage Of The Taormina Film Festival

The Sicily-set festival opened with a gala ceremony that included a “Pavarotti Forever” benefit event headlined by Placido Domingo and Vittorio Grigolo at the city’s famed Teatro Antico amphitheater built by the Greeks around the third century B.C.

Check out the studio portraits below and keep checking back as we add more.