Ten international works in competition, 4 out of competition, 8 titles in the Panorama Italy competition, not to mention special screenings, restored works and short films amidst world premieres, directorial debuts and original films: the 21st edition of Alice nella Città, the independent, parallel section of Rome Film Fest dedicated to the younger generations, is offering up a jam-packed programme (between 18 and 29 October, in various locations across the capital) where fairy tales are used as a means to explore the modern world.

Identity, desire and the search for identity are just some of the themes running through many of the titles selected this year by Alice’s directors Fabia Bettini and Gianluca Giannelli, who presented the programme on Wednesday in Rome’s Auditorium. The competition will open with Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex [+lire aussi :
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interview : Molly Manning Walker
fiche film], which won the Un Certain Regard competition in Cannes, before showcasing titles such as Una Gunjak’s Excursion [+lire aussi :
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interview : Una Gunjak
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interview : Hugues Hariche
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interview : María Zanetti
fiche film]. The line-up also include Lonely [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] by Italian-Swiss director Michele Pennetta, depicting a moving journey by two free souls who are united in their passion for music, and The Other Son [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] by Juan Sebastián Quebrada, which is an autobiographically-flavoured first work revolving around a teenager wrestling with a painful loss. The complex nature of family ties is the common theme of two competition titles: the only Italian film competing, Gianluca Santoni’s first work Io e il Secco [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], whose tiny protagonist hires a killer to protect his mother from domestic violence, and Clenched Fists [+lire aussi :
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interview : Vivian Goffette
fiche film] by Belgium’s Vivian Goffette, exploring the consequences of blood ties taken to the extreme. Belgium will also offer up Katika Bluu [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], Stéphane Vuillet and Stéphane Xhroüet’s second work about a former child-soldier in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, while Warwick Thornton’s Australian title The New Boy, starring Cate Blanchett, rounds off the competition selection.

Also available to view in the Out of Competition line-up are Club Zero [+lire aussi :
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interview : Jessica Hausner
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fiche film] by James Hawes (the festival’s closing film), starring Anthony Hopkins and Helena Bonham Carter, and Federico Bondi’s Italian-Belgian movie Superluna, focusing on the thoughts, words and actions of children within a small community hit by an earthquake. Special screenings will revolve around James Hunt’s French comedy The New Toy (starring Jamel Debbouze and Daniel Auteuil), Benoît Chieux’s animated movie Sirocco and the Kingdom of Air Streams [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], Jim Capobianco’s stop-motion animation The Inventor [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], and, in collaboration with Rome Film Fest, a premiere of The Boy and the Heron by Oscar-winning Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki.

Among the 8 titles gracing the Panorama Italy line-up, which blend the monstrous with the wonderous, the brutality of nature with childlike amazement, and archaic forces with new ways of living, is Luna Gualano’s La guerra del Tiburtino III [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], an irreverent comedy which sees aliens landing in the Roman outskirts with a view to conquering the world; Francesco Carnesecchi’s horror film Resvrgis; Marco Martani’s film noir Eravamo bambini [+lire aussi :
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fiche film]; and cinéma vérité in the form of Stefano Chiantini’s Una madre and Emiliano Corapi’s Suspicious Mind, where what starts out as a game of Russian Roulette slowly turns, minute by minute, into sentimental annihilation. Films such as Massimiliano Zanin’s sports-based movie The Cage [+lire aussi :
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interview : Massimiliano Zanin
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Rounding off the Alice programme are events such as the Womenlands meetings, for a new kind of female-style storytelling approach, involving actresses Anna Foglietta, Alissa Jung and Nastassja Kinski; encounters with directors Jessica Hausner and Fien Troch; a tribute to animator and director Simone Massi (recently seen in Venice with Nowhere [+lire aussi :
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fiche film]); two restored works (L’isola by Costanza Quatriglio and Il cavaliere inesistente by Pino Zac, based on Italo Calvino’s novel The Nonexistent Knight); the new professional event dedicated to short movies Short Film Days (running 18 - 20 October); and the return of Sintonie, in collaboration with the Venice Film Festival, offering up 6 titles hailing from the Lido, including the film which scooped Best Director in the Orizzonti line-up, Paradise is Burning [+lire aussi :
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interview : Mika Gustafson
fiche film] by Mika Gustafson.