Directed by Iranian-American Massy Tadjedin, with a star-studded cast featuring Keira Knightley, Eva Mendes, Sam Worthington, and Guillaume Canet, the film is set to kick off the competition section of the Official Selection.
Another hotly-awaited title in the Official Selection lineup is Rabbit Hole by John Cameron Mitchell, which marks Nicole Kidman’s debut as a producer. Starring Kidman along with Dianne Wiest and Aaron Eckhart, the film is the dramatic story of a couple who grapple with the sudden loss of their only child: scenes from a troubled marriage further tested by the bereavement process.
Anticipation is also mounting for another event that is already a glorious tradition started by the Rome Film Festival: the Duetto conversation series in the Extra Section. After Bertolucci and Bellocchio, Servillo and Verdone, and Muccino and Tornatore, two stars pivotal to Italian cinema over the past twenty years, Margherita Buy and Silvio Orlando, will pair up on the Auditorium stage.
"I’m glad I met her and even detested her, but in any case to have been there at delicate transitions in her complex career. I may even have been of some help to her; I do know we have shared a lot of laughs together.” While Buy gaily retorts, “When I see him walking like a duck, with his hands folded behind his back like the resident intellectual in a small town who spouts off about politics and the meaning of life at the café, I laugh my head off. Let me say, however, that sitting in that café is a privilege, because everything Orlando says is pure gold,” says Silvio Orlando about Buy.
The Festival’s youth-oriented section, Alice nella città, will host the premiere of the first Italian film in 3D, Winx Club 3D – Magica Avventura by Iginio Straffi. The film shows the Winx struggling to restore the status quo by defending the Tree of Life that maintains the balance between Good and Evil, and striving to defeat the witches who have robbed them of them of their powers.
The Focus Section spotlights Japanese cinema and culture this year and dedicates a special event to filmmaker Akira Kurosawa on the centenary of his birth. The Festival will be screening the restored version of Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Rashōmon. In addition, there will be a Focus tribute to the director Satoshi Kon, who died yesterday at the age of 47.
And twenty years after the death of Ugo Tognazzi (October 27, 1990), the Festival commemorates the actor with the premiere of the documentary by Maria Sole Tognazzi, Ritratto di mio padre. But in the Official Selection Tognazzi’s presence will be felt across the board: each film in competition in the various sections will be preceded by a montage of the actor’s finest performances.
The International Rome Film Festival is organized by the Fondazione Cinema per Roma.
