25/09/2009

For the 4th Rome International Film Festival, the experimental section directed by Mario Sesti, L’altro cinema/Extra, has become competitive and will award the Silver Marc’Aurelio for Best Documentary. Of the 12 titles in competition, the seven European films will be up against mostly US adversaries.

Italian titles are Claudio Giovannesi’s Fratelli d’Italia and L’Italia del Nostro Scontento by Elisa Fuksas, Francesca Muci and Lucrezia Le Moli – which look at the country’s contradictions – and Antonello Matarazzo’s Latta e Cafè and Cosimo Messeri’s The One Man Beatles – which are portraits of artists.

Also in competition is Edmond Roch’s Spanish title Garbo, the Man Who saved the World, Germany's PIN2011 by Torsten König and Sons of Cuba by Andrew Lang of the UK. Notable out-of-competition films are two road-movies, Bunny and the Bull [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (UK) and Simon Konianski [+see also:
film review
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interview: Micha Wald, director of Sim…
film profile] (France/Belgium/Canada); besides almost all-Italian special events, with new works by Ermanno Olmi and Edoardo Winspeare, and a look at the recent earthquake in L’Aquila Bella Mè, produced by Daniele Vicari and Valerio Mastandrea.

Alice in the City is an ever-increasing place for discovery, “with many debut films, extraordinary child actors and numerous stories of blood ties, in a kind of ‘public diary’,” explained section director Gianluca Giannelli, who also chose many European titles (nine out of the 12 films). The sidebar offers Alessandro di Robilant’s Marpiccolo; Dominique Monféry animated film Nat e il Segreto di Eleonora, a French-Italian co-production that marks the return of Lanterna Magica; and Martin Koolhoven’s Winter in Wartime [+see also:
film review
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film profile], (Belgium/Netherlands), submitted to the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominations.

Lastly, Gaia Morrione’s section Occhio sul Mondo offers eight films dedicated to the environment and sustainable development, after the Focuses of the past two years on India and Brazil. They include Latta e Cafè, Augusto Contento’s Strade d’Acqua nelle Foreste Amazzoniche, La Questione Nucleare with Ugo Fabrizio Giordani, and the disappearance of fish predicted for 2048, as told in British director Rupert Murray’s The End of the Line.