ROME FILM FEST | FESTA DEL CINEMA DI ROMA

18 – 28 October 2018

Cate Blanchett. Jonathan Safran Foer, Thierry Frémaux and Shirin Neshat to attend onstage conversations

Il vizio della speranza by Edoardo De Angelis and the Watergate series by Charles Ferguson to screen in Rome

As previously announced, the Rome Film Fest, directed by Antonio Monda, will bestow its Lifetime Achievement Award to Martin Scorsese. Furthermore, this year the fest will give another Lifetime Achievement Award to French actress Isabelle Huppert. The award will be presented by Italian actor Toni Servillo. Over the course of her career Isabelle Huppert worked with some of the greatest European and American filmmakers, such as Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Maurice Pialat, Marco Ferreri, the Taviani brothers, Marco Bellocchio, Michael Haneke, Andrzej Wajda, Michael Cimino and David O. Russell. The winner of international awards for her performances, including a Golden Globe for Paul Verhoeven’s Elle (2017), the Parisian actress will also attend an onstage conversation in the Close Encounters series and will comment on a series of clips selected from the films that influenced her life as an artist. “I am excited that the Rome Film Fest will celebrate an actress of extraordinary sensibility, sophistication and depth such as Isabelle Huppert – explained artistic director Antonio Monda – a magnificent humanistic performer who is always able to convey, even in difficult and dramatic roles, remarkable empathy for the characters she plays”.

The Close Encounters series will also feature onstage conversations with:

CATE BLANCHETT

Two-time Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett (The Aviator by Martin Scorsese, Blue Jasmine by Woody Allen) is one of the most extraordinary, intense and refined actresses of contemporary cinema, and since 1999, she was nominated seven times by the Academy. During her career Blanchett collected an extraordinary list of collaborations: from Steven Spielberg to Peter Jackson, from Wes Anderson to Ron Howard, from David Fincher to Steven Soderbergh, from Shekhar Kapur to Todd Haynes. In Rome, she will speak about her life as an artist as well as her dedication to social and environmental initiatives: in 2016 the United Nations High Commission for refugees nominated her a Goodwill Ambassador for her humanitarian commitment. 

JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Novelist and author of essays Jonathan Safran Foer, one of the finest talents of world fiction, will attend a Close Encounter during the upcoming Rome Film Fest and will talk about his work and about the relationship between literature and cinema. Author of internationally acclaimed bestsellers, Safran Foer has examined both memory and current events in our contemporary society in “Everything is Illuminated” and “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” (both novels were made into films), has explored ethical and environmental issues of extraordinary significance in the pages of “Eating Animals”, and later addressed the theme of family and identity today in “Here I Am”.

THIERRY FRÉMAUX

Renowned French film critic Thierry Frémaux, General Delegate of the Cannes Film Festival and Director of the Lumière Institute in Lyon, will meet the audience of the Rome Film Fest to discuss the significance of film festivals today and how they might evolve.

SHIRIN NESHAT

Iranian photographer and video-artist Shirin Neshat will be the protagonist of an onstage conversation at the MAXXI - the National Museum of 21^st Century Arts, organized in collaboration with Videocittà. After winning an award at the Venice Art Biennale in 1999, Shirin Neshat earned a Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice International Film Festival in 2009 with her debut feature-length film Women without Men, adapted from the homonymous novel by Shahrnush Parsipur. Over the years, the artist has gained recognition thanks to her ability to describe the complex social conditions within the Islamic culture, turning her gaze to the role of women.

As previously announced, the Close Encounters will also feature directors, actors and leading figures in the world of art and culture, including Martin Scorsese, Sigourney Weaver, Giuseppe Tornatore, Pierre Bismuth. Furthermore, the conversations with cinema professionals will include cinematographers Luca Bigazzi and Arnaldo Catinari, and editors Giogiò Franchini and Esmeralda Calabria.

The official lineup of the Rome Film Fest will include:

Il vizio della Speranza (The Vice of Hope) by Edoardo De Angelis

Edoardo De Angelis is back behind the camera following the success of Indivisibili - which won six David di Donatello and six Nastri d’Argento awards - to tell a story of vendetta and reconciliation on the backdrop of the Volturno river. Maria (Pina Turco, Gomorra – La serie) leads a life with neither dreams nor desires, taking care of her mother and working in service to a bejewelled madam. Accompanied by her pitbull, Maria ferries pregnant women across the river, in what seems to her to be an endless purgatory. But this woman, one day, will be visited by hope, in its most powerful and ancestral form, as miraculous as life itself: because preserving one’s humanity has always been the greatest of revolutions. The cast also features Massimiliano Rossi, Marina Confalone, Cristina Donadio, Marcello Romolo. The score was composed by Neapolitan musician Enzo Avitabile. Il vizio della speranza is produced by Attilio De Razza and Pierpaolo Verga and distributed by Medusa.

The Watergate series directed and produced by Charles Ferguson

Based on one of the greatest political scandals in the history of the United States, the new series by the History Channel reviews the events that, between 1972 and 1974, led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. The director Charles Ferguson, winner of an Oscar® for Best Documentary for Inside Job, and nominated for another for No End in Sight, reconstructs the entire story with an exciting and compelling narration, supported by a range of original images and materials, some of which have been retrieved using the most advanced computer technologies. Watergate also relies on recordings from the archives, the transcriptions of court trials, eyewitness accounts and new interviews with members of Congress, staff members from the Nixon administration, prosecutors and reporters. Against the background, the Vietnam war, the social and cultural transformations of the 1960s and the emergence of a new global subject, China.

Remembering the 1943 round up in the Roman ghetto

On October 16^th, 1943, the German Gestapo rounded up the Jews in the Roman ghetto: seventy-five years after those dramatic events, the so-called “Sabato Nero” (Black Saturday) will be commemorated with two screenings to take place ahead of the Rome Film Fest opening, organized in collaboration with Roma Capitale, the Fondazione Museo della Shoah and the Istituto Luce Cinecittà. The programme includes La retata. Roma, 16 ottobre 1943 by Ruggero Gabbai, a docufilm that gathers eyewitness accounts and documents to reconstruct the phases of this tragic event, the first great mass arrest of Jews in Italy, which ended with their deportation to the concentration camps at Auschwitz. Eighty years after the racial laws were passed, 1938 – Quando scoprimmo di non essere più italiani by Pietro Suber addresses the stories of Italians, Jewish and not, during the period ranging from the publication of the laws passed by the Fascist regime (1938) to the deportations from Italy (1943-1945).

The programme will also include Who Will Write Our History by Roberta Grossman, produced by Nancy Spielberg and based on the eponymous book by Samuel Kassow: the documentary tells the story of historian Emanuel Ringelblum, who secretly built an archive inside the Warsaw Ghetto, which then became one of the most important archives of the Holocaust. Furthermore, the lineup will include a tribute to Claude Lanzmann with the screening of Sobibór, 14 octobre 1943, 16 heures. Known for his commitment to telling the story of the Holocaust, Lanzmann – who also directed the feature film Shoah – focused his documentary on the Sobibór revolt, the only victorious revolt of Jews interned in the concentration camps.

The Rome Film Fest in the city: Marina Sagona’s new exhibition “The Prisoner”

The new exhibition by Marina Sagona, “The Prisoner”, will open on October 17^th at Fondaco (Via della Frezza 50-51, Rome). In a series of drawings and sculptures, as well as a sound piece, the artist will illustrate the pain and claustrophobia of bad relationships. As author Claire Messud writes in her essay introducing this work: “We are always ready to give, believing that sooner or later our sacrifices will be recognized; we always put the needs and desires of others before our own; we are proud of our ability to stand steadfast in the midst of the flames, and to burn”.

The Rome Film Fest will take place from 18 to 28 October 2018 at the Auditorium Parco della Musica and will involve several other locations and cultural realities in the Italian capital. It will be held under the artistic direction of Antonio Monda and produced by the Fondazione Cinema per Roma headed by Laura Delli Colli with General Manager Francesca Via.

The official press conference announcing the 2018 Rome Film Fest lineup will be held in Rome, on Friday October 5^th. 

Fondazione Cinema per Roma

Press Office | International Press

Sede Operativa: Piazzale Cardinal Consalvi, 9

Sede Legale: Viale Pietro de Coubertin, 10 

Rome Film Fest | Festa del Cinema di Roma

October 18-28, 2018

www.romacinemafest.it

@romacinemafest | #RomaFF13

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