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AUDIOVISUAL AND TV Italy

RomaFictionFest: An international showcase

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"It will be an important occasion for those making fiction TV and a great showcase for a business that must remain competitive", said president of the Lazio Region Piero Marrazzo, speaking on the first edition of the RomaFictionFest, a festival dedicated to international television fiction programmes, to be held in the Italian capital from July 2-7 under the artistic direction of Felice Laudadio.

With its €4.5m budget, gathered from public funds and private sponsors, the festival’s debut promises to be sumptuous. The numerous sections dedicated to fiction TV – from series to movies, from mini-series to docudrama to comedy – will feature hundreds of Italian and foreign titles, representing the cream of the crop of European and international television.

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Confirmed titles include The Tudors, directed by Ciaran Donnelly and Brian Kirk, written by Michael Hirst (screenwriter of Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth), and starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers; Caravaggio, directed by Angelo Longoni, with cinematography by Vittorio Storaro; O’ Professore by Maurizio Zaccaro, with Sergio Castellitto and scripted by Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli; Adolf Winkelmann’s Side Effects, a mini-series denouncing multinational pharmaceutical companies for the tragic fact that approximately 10,000 children worldwide were born worldwide as a result of the drug Thalidomide; War and Peace, directed by Robert Dornhelm; and new episodes of Lost, The Sopranos and Grey’s Anatomy.

TV movies include L’ultimo padrino by Marco Risi, with Michele Placido; Frozen by Friedemann Fromm, a German thriller with Veronica Ferres and Martin Feifel; and Cold Summer by Hartmut Schoen, on the dramatic night in August of 1961 when Berlin Wall was raised (Germany, world premiere).

E poi ancora The Flood by Tony Mitchell, with Robert Carlyle, Tom Courtenay and David Suchet (UK, world premiere); The Trojan Horse by Charles Binamé (Canada, world premiere); March of Millions by Kai Wessel (Germany); The State Within by Daniel Percival (UK); and a focus dedicated to British Comedy with a showcase of superb programs such as Suburban Shootout, Coupling, Blackadder and Little Britain.

There will naturally be no lack of focuses on the TV industry, international seminars, sections on the DVD, Masterclasses, conferences on formats, digital media and retrospectives. Offering an advance reimbursement of VAT spent by foreign productions and having created a €6m fund for small and medium-sized companies who choose to shoot in the region, the Lazio region "is currently the largest Italian audiovisual area and one of the largest in Europe", emphasised Marrazzo, "with nearly 100,000 people working in the sector. RomaFictionFest will have an important fallout in terms of the economy and its image".

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(Translated from Italian)

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