23/09/2024 - Directed by Paola Malanga for the third year running, the Roman festival will celebrate its 19th edition between 16 and 27 October

A pre-opening slot occupied by Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, a competition featuring 18 titles hailing from 29 countries, an array of world premieres, and lifetime achievement awards set to be bestowed upon Viggo Mortensen and Johnny Depp - who’ll be presenting his directorial debut, Modi – Three Days on the Wing of Madness, toplined by Riccardo Scamarcio - are just a few of the highlights from the upcoming Rome Film Fest, whose 19th edition is unspooling 16 – 27 October in the Auditorium Parco della Musica and in various other venues across the Italian capital. It will be an “international public celebration unlike any other, with a generous and all-encompassing line-up”, according to the brand-new president of Rome’s Film Foundation Salvatore Nastasi, who joined artistic director Paola Malanga last Friday to present the festival programme at one of the festival venues, the Teatro Olimpico.

There’ll be 100 titles from 48 countries in this latest edition of the event, which was pulled together with a budget of 8.5 million euros. One of the movies showcased by the Progressive Cinema Competition will be Finnish director Teemu Nikki’s new work, 100 Litres of Gold [+see also:
film review
interview: Teemu Nikki
film profile], co-produced with Italy and set to be screened in a world premiere. It tells the story of two sisters who manufacture beer and who find themselves in trouble when their third sister orders one hundred litres of the stuff for her wedding. Other world premieres include that of opening film, The Great Ambition [+see also:
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film profile] by Andrea Segre, starring Elio Germano in the shoes of the legendary PCI secretary Enrico Berlinguer; Sara Petraglia’s first work L’albero [+see also:
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film profile], a poetic and scathing portrait of modern-day twenty-year-olds, starring Tecla Insolia and Carlotta Gamba; claustrophobic thriller (and remake of Locke [+see also:
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film profile]) Le Choix [+see also:
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film profile] by Gilles Bourdos, starring Vincent Lindon, who was recently awarded the Volpi Cup in Venice, and Reading Lolita in Tehran [+see also:
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film profile], an Italian-Israeli co-production based upon Azar Nafisi’s 2003 bestseller and helmed by the director of The Syrian Bride Eran Riklis. There’ll also be Paradiso in vendita by Luca Barbareschi, telling the story of an imaginary Sicilian island which the bankrupt Italian government decides to sell to France, and L’isola degli idealisti [+see also:
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film profile] by Elisabetta Sgarbi, which is based upon Giorgio Scerbanenco’s novel of the same name. Another world premiere comes in the form of Tony Kaye’s grotesque US comedy The Trainer, starring Vito Schnabel, with the competition likewise boasting Christopher Andrews’s directorial debut Bring them Down [+see also:
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film profile], which is a complex drama about family feuds in rural Ireland starring Barry Keoghan; Spirit World by Eric Khoo, starring Catherine Deneuve; They Will Be Dust [+see also:
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interview: Carlos Marqués-Marcet
film profile] by Carlos Marques-Marcet; Art or Fart [+see also:
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interview: Stefan Liberski
film profile] by Stefan Liberski, and first works About Luis by Germany’s Lucia Chiarla and Night Call [+see also:
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interview: Michiel Blanchart
film profile] by Belgian Michiel Blanchart.

World premieres in the non-competitive Freestyle section - whose name refers to the movies’ forms and style - include Ciao bambino [+see also:
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interview: Edgardo Pistone
film profile] by Edgardo Pistone, which is one of the final films produced by the late Gaetano Di Vaio of Bronx Film; Marko Polo by Elisa Fuksas, which sees the director travelling to Medjugorje and thinking about faith, and Natale fuori orario by Gianfranco Firriolo, which is part-road-movie and part-concert-film and stars singer-songwriter Vinicio Capossela. There’s also room for series, including the fourth and final chapter of My Brilliant Friend [+see also:
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series profile] - Storia della bambina perduta, directed by Laura Bispuri; This Is Not Hollywood - Avetrana [+see also:
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series profile] by Pippo Mezzapesa, exploring the murder in Apulia of 15-year-old Sarah Scazzi; Il conte di Montecristo by Bille August, and Miss Fallaci by Luca Ribuoli.

The non-competitive Grand Public section dedicated to mainstream films will be showcasing an array of works, including Luca Zingaretti’s directorial debut La casa degli sguardi [+see also:
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film profile] by Michele Placido, which stars Fabrizio Bentivoglio in the shoes of Luigi Pirandello; Gabriele Muccino’s action movie, Fino alla fine [+see also:
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film profile], boasting an international cast; Hey Joe [+see also:
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film profile] by Claudio Giovannesi, starring James Franco; The Return [+see also:
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film profile] by Uberto Pasolini; The Children’s Train by Cristina Comencini, U.S. Palmese [+see also:
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film profile] by the Manetti Bros, and Mauro Mancini's sophomore feature, Mani nude

Rounding off the festival agenda, we’ll find the Best of 2024 line-up, showcasing the best films from other international festivals, the tribute set to be paid to Marcello Mastroianni who would have celebrated his 100th birthday this year, and the two sections dedicated to Q&As with the audience - Paso Doble and Absolute Beginners – whose protagonists will be announced in the coming days.

(Translated from Italian)