Three minutes: that is the time given to portrait makers at a festival to fix the celebrities. A time, before the entrance onto the red carpet, in which the sitters strip themselves for a few instants of their own image and regain their intimate humanity.

It is in that moment that Ghilardi fixes the great icons of the cinema — actors and actresses, but also directors, screenwriters and performers. The portraits in this volume are portraits of people before they are portraits of celebrities.