Italiano
Tomorrow, Saturday, October 22nd, the awards ceremony for the 17th edition of the Rome Film Fest, presented by Geppi Cucciari, takes place at 4:30pm in the Sala Petrassi at the dell’Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone.
A jury made up of the filmmaker and cartoonist Marjane Satrapi, the actor and filmmaker Louis Garrel, the filmmakers Juho Kuosmanen and Pietro Marcello, and the producer Gabrielle Tana will be handing out the following awards to the films in the Progressive Cinema Competition: Best Film, Jury Grand Prize, Best Director, Best Screenplay, the Monica Vitti Award for Best Actress, the Vittorio Gassman Award for Best Actor, and the Special Jury Prize going to one of the following categories: Best Cinematography, Best Editing, or Best Soundtrack.
Two awards will go to films eligible in three Fest sections: the Progressive Cinema Competition, Freestyle, and Grand Public. The Ugo Tognazzi Award for Best Comedy will be assigned by a jury headed by filmmaker Carlo Verdone and composed of actress Marisa Paredes and writer, director and actress Teresa Mannino. The BNL BNP Paribas Award for Best First Feature will be conferred by a jury headed by filmmaker and screenwriter Julie Bertuccelli and composed of filmmaker Roberto De Paolis and film critic Daniela Michel.
And this year, as always, Fest audiences have their say in choosing a winner from the Progressive Cinema Competition, with the FS – Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane Audience Award.
On Saturday, October 22nd, the Grand Public section comes to a close with two screenings.
At 7pm the Sala Sinopoli hosts One Day at a Time by Alessandro Aronadio. Taking inspiration from Long Story Short by the Australian director Josh Lawson, Aronadio works on a comedy format and on paradoxes in time that may be traced back to Groundhog Day. Dante, unlike Bill Murray in Harold Ramis’ movie, does not always go back to the same day in time (and takes advantage of it) but leaps forward one year and is the only person who doesn’t know what has happened in the meantime.
At 10pm, in the same theater, the screening is Bros by Nicholas Stoller. Bobby Leiber hosts a gay podcast and is on the board of New York’s first LGBTQIA+ Museum. He’s gay, single, wears glasses, and doesn’t believe in serious relationships, until he falls in love with Aaron, a handsome young guy he meets in a club. So begins the first gay romantic comedy produced by a major (Universal), and with a LGBTQIA+ cast. it’s all falling in love, falling out, getting turned down, breaking up and rekindling romance, like Meg Ryan and Billy Cristal in When Harry Met Sally.
The Special Screenings section wraps up with a screening of Via Argine 310 by Gianfranco Pannone (at 3:30pm, Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna). In 2021, 426 workers on laid off by the multinational appliance manufacturer Whirlpool in Naples risk being fired and fight for their jobs. This is the story of a factory on the verge of shutting down within the year, of a motivated core of specialized workers about to be fired and of an Italian film personality who has not forgotten his own proletarian origins. The actor and director Alessandro Siani, the son of workers from this region, Campania, demonstrates his solidarity with the workers on the picket line in Via Argine 210.
French author Annie Ernaux, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature, is a guest of the 17th edition of the Film Fest and will be on hand for the screening of the documentary The Super 8 Years, made with her son David Ernaux-Briot. In this work, Annie Ernaux opens up her keepsake chest and takes out the home movies she made between 1972 and 1981, with the Super-8 camera her husband Philippe Ernaux had bought to capture their lives and those of their two young children. The Super 8 Years is an intimate work, and the stream of her narration encapsulates more than just the passing of time, for her and her family; it also powerfully conveys half a century of history, reflecting all the fascinating and tumultuous changes occurring in France and in the world over those years.
In the Freestyle section, at 9pm in the Sala Petrassi, audiences can catch the first three episodes of I Am Lillo, the miniseries by Eros Puglielli that starts with the most exhilarating comic character since Tafazzi, created by Pasquale Petrolo/Lillo for the game show LOL – Chi ride è fuori. Guest stars like Paolo Calabresi, Valerio Lundini, Emanuela Fanelli, Corrado Guzzanti, and Maccio Capatonda add their takes on the undying art of improv with a hyper-realist and trans-media slant.
Four titles from Best of 2022 are screening tomorrow. At 6:30pm in the Sala Petrassi, Klondike by Maryna Er Gorbach is one of the films that have come out of Ukraine this year, but this one takes place at a time and in a very particular locality: a small factory in Donbass, on the Russian border, in July 2014. A cowardly, self-seeking husband takes a servile attitude to the invaders, while his pregnant wife openly stands up to them, even after the Russians “mistakenly” destroy part of their home and bring down a Malaysia Airlines jet.
At 6pm, the Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna hosts Corsage by Marie Kreutzer: starring Vicky Krieps and accompanied by a contemporary dissonant soundtrack, the film is a study of the anger and the fragility of a historical figure, as austere as she is mysterious, as rebellious as she is glorious.
And at 9:30pm in the same theater, Boy From Heaven by writer and director Tarik Saleh focuses on the convoluted relationship between religion and politics, with the director setting his film inside the Al-Azhar mosque and university in Cairo, one of the principal Sunni Islam teaching institutions and a key part of Egyptian society for many centuries.
At 8:30pm, the MAXXI hosts Rabiye Kurnaz Vs. George W. Bush by Andreas Dresen. Rabiye Kurnaz, a loving mother and housewife of Turkish descent from Bremen, is desperate: her son Murat is locked up in Guantanamo. She gets nowhere with the police, the authorities are powerless, and she turns to Bernhard Docke, a human rights lawyer. One reserved and calm, the other a pasionaria, they decide to join forces to fight for the release of Murat. Side by side, they make it all the way to the Supreme Court, lodging a lawsuit against George W. Bush.
At 3:30pm, the MAXXI stages the last talk in the series “Dialogues on the Future of Italian Cinema”, devoted to actors this time: an A-list of Italian talent, featuring Anna Foglietta, Valerio Mastandrea, Benedetta Porcaroli, and Alba Rohrwacher. The event is moderated by Piera Detassis.
There’s a packed slate of screenings at the Casa del Cinema, starting in the Sala Cinecittà at 11am with C’era una volta il Cinema Azzurro Scipioni by Lorenzo Negri, presented by the director himself. It brings to the big screen the life, death, and rebirth of the Cinema Azzurro Scipioni, founded in Rome in the 1980s by filmmaker Silvano Agosti. As for the documentaries in the History of Cinema section, audiences can catch (at 9pm) the latest by Fabrizio Corallo, Virna Lisi – La donna che rinunciò a Hollywood, a sentimental journey through the life and career of Virna Lisi, through documents from the archives and previously unreleased interviews. The film will be introduced by its director. Also at 9pm, there’s the restored version of La Grande Bouffe by Marco Ferreri. Two titles from the retrospective “Ms. Woodward And Mr. Newman”, curated by Mario Sesti, screen on Saturday: The Glass Menagerie by Paul Newman (Sala Cinecittà at 3:30pm) and a repeat screening of Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (Sala Kodak, at 9:30pm). Earlier in the Sala Kodak, audiences can catch Pasolini, cronologia di un delitto politico (at 2:45pm), Living It Up (at 5:15pm), and I magnifici 4 della risata (at 7:30pm).
Repeat screenings of titles at the Rome Film Fest abound on Saturday at the Cinema Giulio Cesare. In sala 1 at 4pm, there’s Via Argine 310, followed by Corsage at 7pm and Boy from Heaven at 10pm. Sala 3 hosts Amsterdam at 4:30pm and Bros at 10:30pm. In sala 5, the lineup features Lola (at 5pm), Daniel Pennac: I Saw Maradona! (at 7:30pm), and the first three episodes of I Am Lillo (at 10pm). Lastly, sala 7 hosts Jane Campion, the Cinema Woman at 4pm, La croce e la svastica at 6:30pm, and Mamma contro G. W. Bush at 9pm.
The Teatro Palladium wraps up its screening series in collaboration with the Fest with Kill Me If You Can by Alex Infascelli (at 8:30pm): the director will be on hand to present the film. And at Scena, Saturday’s screenings are Jane Campion, the Cinema Woman (at 6:30pm) and Via Argine 310 (at 9pm).
The Nuovo Cinema Sacher is screening The Innocent at 4pm, Scarlet at 6:15pm, and The Hummingbird at 9pm.
Two Roman cinemas are involved tomorrow, Saturday, October 22nd, in the partnering between Fest, AGIS, and ANEC. At the Cineland, the screenings are Ora tocca a noi – Storia di Pio La Torre (at 5:30pm), The Peace of the Future (at 7:30pm), and The Prince of Rome (at 9:30pm). At the Andromeda, the titles are Jazz set (at 5:30pm), Life Is (Not) A Game (at 7:30pm), and The Desired War (at 9:30pm).
At 7:30pm, the bookshop L’ora di libertà will screen the film My Life as a Courgette.
