2023-09-23 15:34:17
The journalist Gaia Tortora with “Testa alta, e forward” (Mondadori), in which she tells the story of the arrest in 1983 of her father Enzo Tortora, victim of a sensational miscarriage of justice seen through the eyes of his family, won the 59th edition of the Estense Prize. The verdict arrived at the fifth vote with 22 preferences, at the end of an exciting head-to-head with Paolo Borrometi and his “Traitors. How mud and misdirection have marked Italian history” (Solferino). The vote was characterized by a lively and participatory debate between the technical jury, chaired by Alberto Faustini, and the popular one.
The two juries met today, Saturday 23 September, at the ‘Claudio Abbado’ Municipal Theater in Ferrara to discuss and vote on the winner within the finalist quartet composed not only of Gaia Tortora and Paolo Borrometi, but also of Ezio Mauro with “L’ year of fascism. 1922. Chronicles of the March on Rome” (Feltrinelli) and Marcello Sorgi with “Mura. The writer who challenged Mussolini” (Marsilio).
President Alberto Faustini – spokesperson of the technical jury composed of Michele Brambilla, Luigi Contu, Tiziana Ferrario, Paolo Garimberti, Jas Gawronski, Giordano Bruno Guerri, Agnese Pini, Venanzio Postiglione, Alessandra Sardoni and Luciano Tancredi – observed: “The beautiful thing about this edition was the real competition until the end. The four finalist books are individual and collective because they talk about stories that concern our country, exactly like the one told by Gaia Tortora. It is certainly the story of a family, an autobiography emotional, but also and above all the story of a country that has faced bad justice, paradoxically also thanks to the popularity of the protagonist, otherwise we would never have questioned ourselves so much on the topic. Once again it has emerged how free the jury is, none of us can make predictions on the eve of it and not even a popular juror can do it.”
Gian Luigi Zaina, president of the Estense Prize Foundation, declared: “It was not easy to predict the final outcome because the four books are all of high value. The title of Gaia Tortora is certainly impactful because it tells a familiar story from point of view of those who experienced it first hand, having to live with the trauma caused by a sensational miscarriage of justice”.
Gaia Tortora with “Testa alta, e forward” (Mondadori) tells her story, in the knowledge that it is not hers alone: every day three innocent people end up in prison by mistake, more than a thousand citizens a year. And the media continues to behave as they did with her father: big headlines to point out the alleged culprits and, when things go well, short paragraphs buried in the last pages to report the acquittal, the acquittal, the judicial error. Sharing one’s intimate pain, then, becomes a way to fight against injustice, to prevent all of this from happening again. And move forward, as her father told her, with your head held high.
Gaia Tortora commented on the result that saw her as the winner: “In my heart I consider the victory in the photo finish with my friend Paolo Borrometi an ex aequo, they are two books that tell the history of Italy following parallel threads, on which we there would still be a lot to say. I dedicate this recognition to that girl in eighth grade and therefore to the children in the schools and prisons where I continue to go, especially in the juvenile ones. I would like the children, through my book, to understand that judging immediately is wrong and that they used their heads to form their own ideas.”
At the end of the vote, the Undersecretary for Culture Vittorio Sgarbi spoke and declared: “I am happy to have witnessed part of the work of the two juries which attests to the full democracy of the Estense Prize. Gaia Tortora, a great woman who tells the story of a great father, a man who was the emblem of all those who suffered for bad justice.”
Also at the ‘Claudio Abbado’ Municipal Theater the awards ceremony took place, conducted by Cesara Buonamici, with the awarding of the Golden Eagle to Gaia Tortora and the 39th “Gianni Granzotto Recognition. A style in information” to the journalist Federico Rampini. The award was assigned by the jury chaired by the president of the Estense Prize Foundation, Gian Luigi Zaina. and made up of seven entrepreneurs from the territories of Bologna, Ferrara and Modena (Patrizia Bauer, Luca Cimarelli, Maria Rita Giberti, Paolo Golinelli, Paolo Moscatti, Silvia Pasquali and Giorgio Piacentini).
The Estense Prize, which has rewarded the excellence of Italian journalism since 1965, this year with 69 titles recorded the highest number of nominated volumes in the history of the event.
From this year the main sponsor of the Estense Prize is Azimut Holding. Monica Liverani, CEO of Azimut Capital Management and Managing Director of Emilia-Romagna, Marche and Umbria, as well as Chief Sustainability Officer of Azimut Holding, declared: “We are deeply honored to have brought Azimut’s contribution to the Premio Estense, in an edition extraordinary for the quality expressed and participation. Our support for the Award, which for almost sixty years has continued to encourage and celebrate excellence in Italian journalism by encouraging a constructive debate on often complex current issues, arises from the common commitment to the promotion of culture and the importance of dialogue according to the values of corporate social responsibility that have always guided our Group in contributing to the economic and social progress of the communities in which we operate”.
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