22/09/2025 - The Italian festival, whose upcoming edition will unfold between 15 and 26 October, will host 150 titles from 38 countries, with the Lifetime Achievement Award going to Jafar Panahi

“Rome wants to be the home of independent directors, and, given this year’s programme, I’d say we’ve succeeded”. These are the words of Salvatore Nastasi, chairman of the Rome Film Foundation, who introduced the 20th edition of Rome Film Fest at Auditorium Parco della Musica on Friday morning, an event which boasted over 110,000 attendees last year. This will be the fourth time the festival has been directed by Paola Malanga, who subsequently took to the floor to outline this year’s agenda (which is yet to be finalised, with additional announcements expected in the coming days).

First and foremost, the Progressive Cinema Competition will showcase 18 titles, set to be assessed by a jury led by actress, screenwriter and director Paola Cortellesi and further composed of Finnish director and screenwriter Teemu Nikki, British director and screenwriter William Oldroyd, US writer and illustrator Brian Selznick and French-Finnish actress Nadia Tereszkiewicz. The movies battling it out in this section include The Piano Accident [+see also:
film review
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interview: Quentin Dupieux
film profile] by Quentin Dupieux, starring Adèle Exarchopoulos as an internet star; Good Boy by Jan Komasa, a gritty story starring Stephen Graham (fresh from his victory at the Emmys for his part in the mini-series Adolescence [+see also:
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series profile]), which revolves around a 19-year-old who finds himself held hostage in the basement of a seemingly respectable family’s basement following a night of over-indulgence; Hen [+see also:
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film profile] by György Pálfi, telling the tale of a chicken who wants to keep herself and her family alive, and Six Days in Spring [+see also:
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film profile] by Joachim Lafosse (who scooped Best Director in Rome back in 2023 for A Silence [+see also:
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interview: Joachim Lafosse
film profile]), which is a biting reflection on social roles, classes and ethnic stereotypes.

Four Italian titles have also been selected in competition: 40 secondi by Vincenzo Alfieri, charting the 24 hours preceding the barbaric murder of young Willy Monteiro Duarte; Gli occhi degli altri by Andrea De Sica, which is inspired by the 1970 Casati Stampa murders and is a melodrama imbued with film noir eroticism, starring Jasmine Trinca and Filippo Timi; Sciatunostro by Leandro Picarella, which promises to be an “emotional and unforgettable” coming-of-age film and a tribute to the cinema world; and the documentary Roberto Rossellini, più di una vita by Ilaria de Laurentiis, Andrea Paolo Massara and Raffaele Brunetti, which is dedicated to the great Italian director and showcases as yet unseen footage. The competition also boasts Miss Carbón [+see also:
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interview: Agustina Macri
film profile] by Agustina Macri, Re-Creation [+see also:
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film profile] by Jim Sheridan and David Merriman, The Things You Kill [+see also:
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interview: Alireza Khatami
film profile] by Alireza Khatami, and Winter of the Crow [+see also:
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film profile] by Kasia Adamik. The section will also showcase the first works Left-Handed Girl by Shih-Ching Tsou - Taiwan’s candidate at the Oscars, which focuses on a single mother wrestling with debts and difficulties, co-scripted, edited and produced by Sean Baker (Anora) - and Nino [+see also:
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interview: Pauline Loquès
film profile] by Pauline Loquès, which was presented in Cannes’ Critics’ Week.

New in this year’s line-up is a Best Documentary Prize, set to be awarded by a jury spearheaded by Romanian filmmaker Alexander Nanau. Titles in the running for the trophy include 2000 Meters to Andriivka [+see also:
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film profile] by Mstyslav Chernov, which is Ukraine’s Oscar candidate for Best Foreign Film; Le Chant des forêts by Vincent Munier, Cuba & Alaska [+see also:
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interview: Yegor Troyanovsky
film profile] by Yegor Troyanovsky, I fratelli Segreto by Federico Ferrone and Michele Manzolini, which tells the tale of three brothers who leave Cilento at the end of the 1800s to try their luck in Rio de Janeiro, and which is buoyed by “stupefying” archive material; Kenny Dalglish by Asif Kapadia, which is world premiering in Rome and which revolves around the British footballing legend; and Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk by Sepideh Farsi, which pieces together a portrait of Gaza through months of video calls with 24-year-old Palestinian photographer Fatma Hassouna, who was killed this April during an Israeli attack.

Rounding off Rome Film Fest’s wonderfully rich line-up are the usual non-competitive sections - Freestyle (which includes James McAvoy’s first directorial effort, California Shemin’), Grand Public (including Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Paolo Virzì’s Cinque secondi) and Best of 2025 – alongside tributes to Pier Paolo Pasolini, Claudio Caligari, Carlo Rambaldi, meetings with the audiences of the Paso Doble and Absolute Beginners sections, the Lifetime Achievement Award which is winging its way to Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who’ll be presenting his 2025 Palme d’Or winning movie, It Was Just an Accident [+see also:
film review
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interview: Jafar Panahi
film profile], to audiences, and the new Lifetime Achievement Award for the biggest figures in the global film industry, which is being bestowed upon David Puttnam (Momenti di gloria, Mission, Fuga di mezzanotte).  Last but not least, the festival will be opened by Riccardo Milani’s new movie, La vita va così, and closed by the final season of Carlo Verdone’s Vita da Carlo.

(Translated from Italian)