10/12/2014 - The Ministry for Cultural Heritage is set to join the Rome Cinema Foundation through the Luce Institute with a contribution of 1 million euro

No more "rivalry" with the Venice Film Festival. The Rome Film Festival will go back to being a "celebration" for the public at large, with no competition between its films. This was announced yesterday by the Minister for Cultural Heritage Dario Franceschini, following a meeting with Mayor Ignazio Marino and President of the Lazio Region Nicola Zingaretti. "The Rome Festival will lose its competitive element to go from being a festival to a celebration and will avoid the risk of  overlap that has occurred at times in recent years. The Venice Film Festival will continue to play its role as a world-class competition". 

Minister Franceschini spoke of ''relaunching a film festival in the Capital that’s set, on the one hand, to develop the market and, on the other, to be a real movie celebration'. A relaunch marked also by the intention of the Ministry for Culture to  join the Rome Cinema Foundation through Istituto Luce Cinecittà srl with a contribution of around one million euro, as pointed out by Mayor Marino after the meeting. The dates will also be changed, and will be defined in the second week of October. "we’re thinking about a set date that’s recognisable like the opening of the Scala in Milan", said the Mayor.

All that’s missing now is the name of the new artistic director who will follow in the footsteps of Marco Muller. "We haven’t considered any names yet", stated Marino. It will be up to the Cinema Foundation Shareholders’ Meeting, convened for next week, to make these announcements official and to discuss the new positions.

(Translated from Italian)