Italiano
Matthew Modine will be the president of the international jury that will assign the Best Debut and Second Film Award of the 7th Rome Film Festival (Festival Internazionale del Film di Roma, November 9- 17, 2012, Auditorium Parco della Musica).
The American director, actor, and producer will be joined by director, screenwriter and cinematographer Laura Amelia Guzmán (Dominican Republic), by actress, director and producer Stefania Rocca (Italy), by director Alice Rohrwacher (Italy), and by producer and film critic Tanya Seghatchian (Great Britain). The international jury will award the prize to a debut or second film screened in any one of the competitive sections of the Festival (Competition, CinemaXXI, Prospettive Italia and the independent and parallel sidebar Alice nella città). “Offering new directors an opportunity means, on the one hand, taking into consideration the most noteworthy debuts and on the other, assessing whether style and originality is confirmed, something that only a second work can reveal – explained artistic director Marco Müller – That is why we thought it important to extend our award to the Best Debut and Second Film”.
Matthew Modine (United States)
Director, actor, and producer Matthew Modine directed the feature film, If… Dog… Rabbit (1999), and several distinguished short films. The latest, Jesus Was a Commie (2011), won five film festival awards. Modine has worked with many of the film industry’s most respected directors, including Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight Rises), Oliver Stone (Any Given Sunday), Stanley Kubrick (Full Metal Jacket), Robert Altman (Short Cuts), Curtis Hanson (Too Big to Fail), Abel Ferrara (The Blackout, Mary) and Jonathan Demme (Married to the Mob) to name a few. Modine has been nominated for three Golden Globe Awards and received a Best Ensemble Golden Globe for Robert Altman’s Short Cuts. He played the title character in Alan Parker’s Birdy which won the Cannes Film Festival’s Gran Prix Award. He won a Venice Film Festival Coppa Volpi (Short Cuts)and the Best Actor Golden Lion Award (Streamers by Robert Altman). In addition to cinema, television, and to theatrical work, he wrote the award winning book, Full Metal Jacket Diary (2005, Rugged Land), and has developed and released several new media projects.
Laura Amelia Guzmán (Dominican Republic)
Scriptwriter, producer and director Laura Amelia Guzmán was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in 1980 and attended the International Film School in Cuba. Since 2004 she lives between Dominican Republic and Mexico where she runs the company Aurora Dominicana together with her husband Israel Cárdenas (Mexico, 1980). They share script, photography, production and direction credits on their first and second feature films “Cochochi” and “Jean Gentil”, both of which premiered at Venice Film Festival and have won multiple awards. Their third feature “Carmita” is in postproduction.
Stefania Rocca (Italy)
Stefania Rocca attended the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. She rose to stardom thanks to Naima, the cyberpunk icon in Nirvana (1997) by Oscar-winning director Gabriele Salvatores and with Viol@ (1998) by Donatella Maiorca. She studied at the Actors Studio and worked with Anthony Minghella in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), with Kenneth Branagh in Love’s Labours Lost (2000), and with Tom Tykwer in Heaven (2002). In 2002, she won a nomination for the David di Donatello Award and the Silver Ribbon for Best Actress for If by Chance (Casomai) by Alessandro D’Alatri, as well as for La vita come viene (2004) by Stefano Incerti. She worked for Abel Ferrara in Mary (2005) and Go Go Tales (2007). For Don’t Tell (La bestia nel cuore, 2006) by Cristina Comencini, nominated for the Oscars, she won another nomination for the Silver Ribbons and the David as Best Supporting Actress. She later worked in France in The Candidate (Le Candidat) by Niels Arestrup, and The Invader (L’Envahisseur) by Nicolas Provost, presented at the Venice International Film Festival in 2011.
Alice Rohrwacher (Italy)
Born in Tuscany in 1981, she earned a degree in Humanities at the University of Turin. She studied narrative techniques at the Holden School in Turin and documentary filmmaking at the Videoteca Municipal in Lisbon. In 2003 she made her first documentary, Un piccolo spettacolo, with Pier Paolo Giarolo. She has collaborated with Italian theatre directors such as Moro, Malosti, Vacis and Micheli, alternating her work in dramaturgy with her performance onstage as a musician.
She edited documentary films by Pier Paolo Giarolo (Tradurre, Boyggo), Luciana Fina (Le Réseau), Giuseppe Baresi (In tempo ma rubato), Mirta Morrone (Residuo Fisso).
In 2006 she participated in the collective film Checosamanca, thanks to which she met Carlo Cresto-Dina and Tempesta Films, with whom she made the feature-length film Corpo Celeste, presented at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in Cannes in 2011. She is currently working on her second feature-length fiction film and on a documentary.
Tanya Seghatchian (Great Britain)
Tanya Seghatchian is a film producer. The first to spot the cinematic potential of the Harry Potter books, she developed and produced the first four films in the Potter Franchise with David Heyman, J.K Rowling, Steve Kloves Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuaron and Mike Newell. In 2005 She won a BAFTA for producing Pawel Pawlikowski’s, My Summer of Love.
She was Head of the Development and Film Funds at the UKFC/BFI where she managed development and production investments of British public money in scores of award-winning films including Bright Star,The King’s Speech, The Arbor, Submarine, Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights,We Need to Talk About Kevin,The Iron Lady, Shame, Sightseers and Angel’s Share.
