Italiano
The Rome Film Fest dives into its first weekend lineup. Tomorrow, Saturday, October 15th, the Grand Public section will host four hotly-awaited titles.
At 7pm, the Sala Sinopoli at the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone hosts the premiere of Robbing Mussolini by Renato De Maria, who sets his film in April 1945, at the tail end of the Second World War. The director takes his cue from history (Mussolini’s treasure, better known as “Dongo’s gold”, really existed, but what became of it, no one knows) to dream up a robbery by a ragtag band of thieves inspired by real-life figures. It’s a pop culture blend of genres, styles, and songs from different eras.
At 10pm, the same theatre holds the premiere of The Prince of Rome by Edoardo Falcone. In the papal Rome of 1829, while the main character is played by one of the greatest leading men in contemporary cinema, Marco Giallini, and Edoardo Falcone is a self-declared fan of Luigi Magni’s films, the real starting point of the film he wrote with Marco Martani and Paolo Costella is Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
At 4pm in the Sala Petrassi, the screening is What’s Love Got to Do With It? by Shekhar Kapur, who abandons Elizabethan drama to play with identity, oriental beliefs, western prejudice, unexpected loves, inspired by British fashion celebrity Jemima Kahn’s screenplay. At 6:30pm the same theatre hosts The Lost King, the new film by Stephen Frears: part-comedy, part-thriller, it brings the adventure of Philippa Langley to the screen: an amateur, self-taught history lover, she managed to arrange and find funding for digs that would turn up the remains of King Richard III, under a parking lot in Leicester.
The Progressive Cinema Competition features two titles. At 3:30pm in the Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna, Causeway is the debut film by Lila Neugebauer. Produced and magnificently acted by Jennifer Lawrence, the film shows great sensitivity in exploring and portraying the way soldiers deal with the psychological and physical trauma they experience in war, as well as the difficulties, the misunderstandings and the suffering they seem to have endured in their previous lives, which led them to enrol in the army and leave for far-off destinations, where armed conflict is grisly and the future dangerous and uncertain. In the same theatre at 9pm, the new film by Mounia Meddour, Houria, is about a talented dancer who, after suffering severe physical harm following a seriously violent attack, continues her heroic resistance to pursue her dream.
Two screenings are on the program tomorrow, Saturday, October 15th, in the Special Screenings section. At 6pm in the Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna, the title is Umberto Eco – La biblioteca del mondo by Davide Ferrario. The director, who had collaborated with Umberto Eco in 2017 on an installation on the theme of memory for the Italian pavilion of the Biennale di Venezia, reconstructs the “Professor’s” relationship with books, thanks to the collaboration of family and friends, but above all letting the protagonist himself speak, caustic, biting, and profound. And at 9:30pm, the Sala Petrassi hosts the screening of Portrait of the Queen by Fabrizio Ferri. The renowned photographer (writer, composer, and video maker) takes on the queen’s mystique by means of a script by author and journalist Paola Calvetti (based on her book), and the words, and above all photos, of the master photographers who found themselves face to face with The Queen, the most photographed woman in the world, in her palaces, in studios, or outdoors.
The Freestyle section offers two documentaries, both screened at the MAXXI. At 5pm, festgoers can catch Beloved Shores by Egidio Eronico. As in a Bach suite, the director brings to the big screen the cinematic narrative of a country, Italy, as it appears today, in a film made of solely of images and music. It’s a domestic atlas showing the lay of the land today, its sometimes misunderstood marvels, and familiar places, beloved and often lost.
At 8:30, the MAXXI hosts Infinito. L’universo di Luigi Ghirri. In this film written and directed by Matteo Parisini, the master photographer speaks not only through his own images (photographs and videos); Ghirri has written extensively, and the film retraces his career in his own words, read by Stefano Accorsi.
The first event in the Absolute Beginners section will be held at 4:30pm in the Sala Sinopoli and features filmmaker Luc Besson. The Film Fest guest will be sharing with audiences his first time around behind the camera, when he directed the post-apocalyptic film The Last Battle (1983). The film, with its extraordinary visual impact, was made in black and white in CinemaScope and marked the start of the filmmaker’s collaboration with actor Jean Reno and composer Éric Serra. “The Last Battle was my first feature film: a silent film in black and white from 1982, based on a short film of mine, L’avant-dernier,” the director explained. “Pierre Jolivet and I wrote the script in ten days. Since we were getting nowhere with the producers, we decided to produce it ourselves.”
At 3:30pm, the MAXXI will host the third panel in the “Dialogues on the Future of Italian Cinema” series, devoted to filmmakers: Francesca Archibugi, Marco Bellocchio, Gabriele Mainetti, Susanna Nicchiarelli, Matteo Rovere, and Paolo Virzì will all take the stage for this talk moderated by Piera Detassis.
Free admission to numerous events on Saturday, at the Casa del Cinema in the Sala Cinecittà. At 11am (repeat screening at 3pm, Sala Kodak), the last two episodes of the series The Last Movie Stars will be screened. Directed by Ethan Hawke, created and produced by Emily Wachtel, with Adam Gibbs and Lisa Long Adler, the series sees Martin Scorsese as executive producer. Divided into six parts, this epic docuseries celebrates Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, their enduring and inspiring romance and the incredible talent that made them so beloved the world over.
Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward are also the focus of the 2022 Film Fest Retrospective, curated by Mario Sesti. At 3:30pm, the Casa del Cinema hosts the screening of The Three Faces of Eve by Nunnally Johnson, the film that earned Joanne Woodward an Oscar®. And as part of the tribute to James Ivory, winner of the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award, there will be a screening of The Remains of the Day, with one of Anthony Hopkins’ finest performances, at 5:30pm. At 9pm, the Casa del Cinema screens My Beautiful Laundrette, the debut film by Stephen Frears (1985). Courageous and innovative, the film – starring emerging talent Daniel Day-Lewis – marked the start of Ivory’s collaboration with Anglo-Pakistani novelist Hanif Kureishi. At 6pm and 8:30pm, the Sala Kodak offers repeat screenings of The Long Hot Summer by Martin Ritt and A Married Woman by Jean-Luc Godard.
In collaboration with the Fondazione Cinema per Roma, the Film Fest returns to Rebibbia Prison with screenings for ordinary Roman festgoers and the inmate population, held in the prison’s Auditorium and the new Sala Cinema “Enrico Maria Salerno”. The opening event takes place tomorrow, Saturday, October 15th, with Caesar Must Die by the Taviani brothers, on the tenth anniversary of their Golden Bear at the 2012 Berlinale. Director Paolo Taviani will be on hand with the cast of inmate-actors, most of whom have already done their time.
And once again in 2022, the Film Fest teams up with the Network of Roman Bookshops to arrange specific events aimed at broadening the reach of the Fest’s offerings across the city. At 7:30pm, at the bookshop L’ora di libertà, there will be a screening of the animated film How the Toys Saved Christmas by Enzo d’Alò.
The Cinema Nuovo Sacher will be hosting, at 4pm, the Grand Public title, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris by Anthony Fabian, screen adaptation of the novel by Paul Gallico that features the main character Ada Harris, so popular that she inspired three more literary adventures, three TV adaptations, and a musical. At 6:15pm, the Sacher serves up Final Cut Cut! by Michel Hazanavicius, the well-received opening film at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Hazanavicius, in a pop culture parody vein, serves up a literal remake of One Cut of the Dead, cult movie and thesis film by Ueda Shinichiro in 2017, embellishing the original’s zaniness with surreal French-Japanese touches and a sardonic nod at the chance nature of cinematic inventions. At 9pm, the screening is The Hummingbird by Francesca Archibugi, the opening film at the 17th edition of the Film Fest, based on the novel by Sandro Veronesi, winner of the 2020 Strega Prize.
The collaboration between the Rome Film Fest, AGIS, and ANEC kicks off at a series of cinemas all over the city of Rome, from downtown to the outskirts: Andromeda, Cineland, Ferrero Cinema Adriano, Lux, Mignon, Nuovo Cinema Aquila, Odeon, Stardust, The Space Cinema – Parco de Medici, Tibur, and UCI Porta di Roma. Tomorrow at 5:30pm, at 7pm, and 9pm, the UCI Porta di Roma will be screening three films: Kordon by Alice Tomassini, Umberto Eco – La biblioteca del mondo by Davide Ferrario, and Romulus II: The War for Rome by Matteo Rovere.
The programme of repeat screenings continues on Saturday at the Rome Film Fest.
The Cinema Giulio Cesare, in sala 1, screens All That Breathes by Shaunak Sen (9:30am), the two American films in competition, Sanctuary by Zachary Wigon (12 noon) and Causeway by Lila Neugebauer (4pm), and the documentary Umberto Eco – La Biblioteca del Mondo by Davide Ferrario (6:30pm). In sala 3, at 10am, audiences can catch the first two episodes of Romulus II: The War for Rome by Matteo Rovere; at 12:30, Michel Hazanavicius’s film Final Cut /Cut!; at 5pm Sanctuary, and at 10pm Robbing Mussolini by Renato De Maria. Repeat screenings in sala 5 kick off with Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris by Anthony Fabian (9:30am), followed by The Cure by Francesco Patierno (12 noon), What’s Love Got to Do With It by Shekhar Kapur (4:30pm), The Lost King by Stephen Frears (7pm), and Portrait of the Queen by Fabrizio Ferrario (10pm). Lastly, in sala 7, the Cinema Giulio Cesare is doubling up its repeat screenings: Enrico Cattaneo / Rumore Bianco and Nino Migliori. Viaggio Intorno Alla Mia Stanza (12.30) and Kordon and Rules of War (4pm).
The venue Scena offers two repeat screenings: Lynch/Oz by Alexandre O. Philippe at 6:30pm and All That Breathes by Shaunak Sen at 9pm.
