Taormina 2012: 'Your Sister's Sister' Premieres; Late Singer-Songwriter Lucio Dalla Honored

TAORMINA, Sicily -- The Taormina Film overcame a series of technical problems Wednesday to highlight the European premiere of Lynn Shelton's family mourning comedy Your Sister's Sister and to pay homage to Italian singer-songwriter icon Lucio Dalla, who died in March three days short of his 69th birthday.

our editor recommends

Taormina Film Festival Alters Thursday Lineup to Screen Highly Anticipated Soccer Match

Taormina 2012: Jon Kasdan Screens 'The First Time,' Terry Gilliam Gives 'Master Class'

Sophia Loren and Terry Gilliam Among Highlights of Taormina Fest

An electric failure at the festival's central Palazzo di Congressi building threw the afternoon's tight screening schedule off track, delaying the showing of Alexandre de La Patelliere and Matthieu Delaporte's family-revelation comedy Le Prenom (The Name) by more than two hours, and forcing Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov's 2008 mystery Yuren Den (Yuri's Day) -- part of the festival's Focus Russia sidebar -- to be rescheduled the following day.

Earlier in the day, back-to-back video conferences with Italian film directors Pupi Avati and Gabriele Muccino suffered technical issues that made the two directors impossible to understand at points.

Despite the video linkup problems, the 73-year-old Avati did manage to detail plans for his next project, an epic story Un Matrimonio (A Matrimony), broke up into six 100-minute episodes, telling the sentimental story of his parents' 50-year marriage and ending with his own 48-year marriage. And Muccino discussed his next project, Playing the Fields, a coming of age story notable as the first film Muccino directed but did not write.

The evening at the Sicilian festival's famous 2,700-year-old Teatro Antico venue, in contrast, went off without a hitch. The tribute to Dalla, meanwhile, drew several prolonged applause from the mostly full theatre. Dalla owned a house near Taormina and wrote some of his best known songs about Sicily.

Your Sister's Sister tell the story of an unlikely series of revelations after the protagonist mourns his brother's death with the help of an old friend and her sister. The film, which will go into release in Ireland and the U.K. on Friday and elsewhere in Europe after that, stars Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Mark Duplass.

the film was the second consecutive Teatro Antico film to star Duplass, who played a supporting role in Tuesday night's Darling Companion, Lawrence Kasdan's comedy about a long-married couple's problems coping with their lost dog.

The 58th edition of the festival concludes Thursday.