Today, November 16, the Rome Film Festival will hand out the official awards for its eighth edition. Actress Anna Foglietta will be the host for the event at 7pm in the Sala Sinopoli.

The jury chaired by James Gray and composed of Verónica Chen, Luca Guadagnino, Aleksei Guskov, Noémie Lvovsky, Amir Naderi, and Zhang Yuan, will assign the following awards to the films in competition: the Golden Marc’Aurelio for Best Film, the Best Director Award, the Special Jury Prize, the Best Actor Award, the Best Actress Award, the Award for Emerging Actor or Actress, the Award for Best Technical Contribution, and the Award for Best Screenplay. The films in competition are also vying for the BNL Audience Award for Best Film, chosen by the public by means of  an electronic voting system.

The films featured in the CinemaXXI competitive lineup – with its own jury composed of Larry Clark (president), Ashim Ahluwalia, Yuri Ancarani, Laila Pakalnina, and Michael Wahrmann – are in the running for the CinemaXXI Award for Best Film, the CinemaXXI Special Jury Prize and the CinemaXXI Short/Medium-Length Film Award.

For the films in the Prospettive Doc Italia competition, the jury headed by Marco Visalberghi and comprised of Christian Carmosino, Gerardo Panichi, Giusi Santoro, and Sabrina Varani, will assign the Doc It – Prospettive Italia Doc Award for Best Italian Documentary.

The Taodue Golden Camera Award for Best First/Second Film will be bestowed on the best emerging filmmaker and producer, chosen from among eighteen films drawn from all the competitive sections. The jury is composed of Roberto Faenza (president), Fausto Brizzi, Carlo Freccero, Alessandra Mammì, Valerio Mieli, Camilla Nesbitt, and Andrea Occhipinti.

Following the awards ceremony, at 9pm in the Sala Sinopoli the Festival’s final official award, the Maverick Director Award, will be assigned to Tsui Hark, filmmaker, producer and screenwriter who led the revolution in film in Hong Kong starting in the late 1970s. This accolade, devoted to master filmmakers who have contributed to reinventing cinema, will be handed out by one of Europe’s first directors to acknowledge the Tsui Hark “phenomenon”, the world-famous French filmmaker Olivier Assayas, winner of a Golden Globe for the TV mini-series “Carlos” and director of acclaimed films such as L’eau froide, Irma Vep, Les Destinées Sentimentales, and Something in the Air. The Maverick Director Award event this year will be rounded out by a Masterclass with Tsui Hark, moderated by Olivier Assayas, Marie-Pierre Duhamel, and Giona Nazzaro.

The international premiere of Tsui Hark’s latest film, Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon 3D (Di Renjie: Shendu longwang 3D), will be presented out of competition after the awards ceremony. This hotly-awaited prequel to Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (Di Renjie, 2010), the multiple award-winning historical kung fu fantasy, is Tsui Hark’s second 3D film after Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, starring martial arts master Jet Li. In the film, the young Dee (Di) Renjie arrives in the imperial capital bent on becoming a magistrate. Early into her reign, the empress Wu Zetian has sent the captain of her guards Yuchi to investigate a dangerous sea monster. By sheer coincidence, Dee and Yuchi find themselves fighting the monster at the same time when it attacks the ceremonial procession preceding the sacrifice of the lovely courtesan Yin. Suspicious of the stranger, Yuchi has Dee imprisoned, but Dee manages to escape and discovers that the highest social caste, which includes the emperor himself, are routinely drinking tea which is probably poisonous, produced by a firm owned by Yuan, who has courted Yin in the past, but has been mysteriously missing for months.                                                                                                                                                                                                             And on Saturday at 3:30pm, in the Sala Petrassi, the Festival’s collateral awards will be handed out, on this occasion as well Italian actress Anna Foglietta will conduct the ceremony. The prizes include: the Farfalla d’oro Prize – Agiscuola, the L.A.R.A. ((Libera Associazione Rappresentanza di Artisti) Award for the Best Italian Actor, the AMC Best Editing Award, the AIC Prize for Best Cinematography, the Best Sound Editing Award – A.I.T.S., the “La Chioma di Berenice” Award for Best Make-up, the “La Chioma di Berenice” Award for Best Hairstyling in international movies, the Maurizio Poggiali Award for Best Documentary, and the Centenario BNL Award: #100sec per il futuro. 

At 5pm, the Teatro Studio will host, out of competition, the screening of Blue Planet Brothers (Chikyu kyodai) by Takashi Miike, one of the most original filmmakers on the contemporary world scene, a disciple of the renowned Imamura Shōhei and director of films acclaimed at leading international festivals: Ôdishon  (International Critics’ Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival), Gokudo kyofu dai-gekijo: Gozu  (presented at the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival), 46-okunen no koi (which screened at the Berlin Film Festival), Jûsan-ninno shikaku (in competition at the Venice Film Festival), Ichimei (in competition at the Cannes Film Festival), and Aku no kyôten  (Rome Film Festival). After presenting his The Mole Song – Undercover Agent Reiji (Mogura no uta) in Rome’s competition this year, Miike also treats the 2013 Festival to a mysterious tale in ten episodes, all of them blending the comedy of the absurd, science fiction and fantasy. It is the story of a meeting that will give rise to one of the most surreal trios ever: a samurai from the feudal era who holds court in the capital, an alien visiting from the planet Cygnus, and a good (or bad?) fairy. Their own stories are interwoven and play out against widely different settings in the Japanese capital.                                                              

Also at 5pm, at the MAXXI, two films in the CinemaXXI lineup will be screened out of competition: Skurstenis by Laila Pakalnina and Ricordi per moderni by Yuri Ancarani. With her film Skurstenis, Russian writer and director Laila Pakalnina, who has a number of award-winning films to her credit that have screened at international festivals including Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Locarno, and Rome, has crafted a story about childhood starring seven little girls with blonde hair, against the backdrop of their environment, their friends and all the objects in the world they inhabit.

Yuri Ancarani, a video artist and filmmaker who has taken part in numerous festivals, including Venice and Rotterdam, and has exhibited his works in world-class museums and shows, such as the Venice Biennale, the MAXXI in Rome and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, brings his Ricordi per moderni to Rome, a series of thirteen videos made between 2000 and 2009 and shown together now for the first time. Starting with the “musical” writings of Pier Vittorio Tondelli, Ancarani retraces the changes that have come to Romagna’s Riviera in recent decades, including immigration and the petrochemical industry, against timeless landscapes. Ancarani was also at the 2012 Rome Film Festival with his short Da Vinci.

And at 8pm at the MAXXI, the last two films on the CinemaXXI programme will be screened out of competition. The Canadian filmmaker Nicholas Pereda, award-winning director of films presented at the world’s top film festivals as well as videos for interdisciplinary shows, operas and dance performances, is in Rome with his medium-length film El palacio, a documentary that follows the daily life of seventeen women who share a large apartment for economic reasons, but also out of solidarity, giving each other a helping hand as they all try to get by doing different jobs.

This will be followed by CinemaXXI’s closing film, Saatvin sair by Amit Dutta, the Indian filmmaker considered to be one of the most innovative auteurs in experimental film today, winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival for his Aadmi Ki Aurat Aur Anya Kahaniya, and the FIPRESCI prize at Oberhausen for his Kramasha. In his latest film screening in Rome, Amit Dutta returns to a theme that has characterized his work since his debut: the relationship between film, painting and music. Indeed, the film is the story of a wandering painter who strays into a forest after noticing a mysterious footprint and hearing an odd melody. This foray into the depths of nature will bring him face to face with his most intimate self.

At 9:30am on Saturday morning, the MAXXI will host the round table “I volti del documentario”, jointly organized by Doc/it, 100 autori, Roma Tre University and the Pesaro International Film Festival of New Cinema. It is the occasion for discussion and debate between audiences and a lineup of representative filmmakers who will look at the many “faces” of Italian documentaries, with the help of a screening of the film Segni particolari: documentarista by Christian Carmosino and Vito Zagarrio. Guest speakers will include Giorgio De Vincenti (director of the Center of Audiovisual Production at Roma Tre University) and Giovanni Spagnoletti (director of the Pesaro International Festival of New Cinema).

After the screening, at 10:40am, Mario Balsamo (documentarian and 100 autori board member) and Gerardo Panichi (president of Doc/it, filmmaker and producer) and the round table guests will put their heads together to analyze and underline the current importance of documentary film. Participants in the debate will include Caterina D’Amico, the didactic director of CSC Rome; Fabio Mancini, commissioning editor of Doc3/RaiTre; Fabio Ferzetti, film critic for the newspaper Il Messaggero; Marco Visalberghi, producer of Sacro GRA; and Andrea Romeo, artistic director of  Biografilm Festival – International Celebration of Lives.

The retrospective “Hercules Conquers the Silver Screen” continues withI giganti di Roma by Antonio Margheritia (at 2:30pm in the Teatro Studio), while the retrospective “Claudio Gora, Director and Actor” will feature a screening of L’odio è il mio dio (at 5:30 in Studio 3).

The awards ceremony for the independent sidebar Alice nella Città will be held at 11:30 in the Sala Petrassi, followed by a screening of La cour de Babel by Julie Bertuccelli, a film screening out of competition in a joint collaboration between the Festival and Alice nella città. At 9pm in the Sala Petrassi there will be a screening of I Wish by Hirokazu Kore-Eda; another film by the same director, Like Father, Like Son, will be shown at 12 noon at the MAXXI. Audiences will meet Hirokazu Kore-Eda at 3pm at the MAXXI.