Robert De Niro will be at the RomeFilmFest this Friday, October 20, to present several sequences from his latest films, announced Tribeca Film Festival directors Jennifer Maguire and Peter Scarlett during a press conference that was also attended by festival president Goffredo Bettini.

While presenting an initiative realised together with the Associazione Piazza di Spagna and Trinità dei Monti, Bettini announced that De Niro will be awarded the Steps and Stars prize for Tribeca, which he founded along with Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff. The award was bestowed this year upon the festival for “the extraordinary capacity shown in the five years since its founding to spread the spirit and passion for the art of cinema throughout the world.”

“Through this passion,” continues the motivation for the prize, “the Tribeca Film Festival has been capable of translating its devotion to the art of film into a social tribute to the community of New York, demonstrating how cinema can contribute to society’s cultural enrichment.”

The award ceremony will precede a beautiful event on the steps of Trinità dei Monti, which will seen by all the locals and tourists that the nearby square can hold: film scenes shot at the Spanish Steps will be projected onto surrounding buildings as well as the steps, alternated by sequences from films screened at the Tribeca festival.

In the Sala Petrassi, De Niro will present the collaboration agreement with the Rome festival, followed by a screening of the film that symbolises this accord, which was presented at Tribeca this year and will presented at Rome: Marwan Hamed’s The Yacoubian Building, a cinematically and politically controversial film in the director’s native Egypt and throughout the world.

The other films to screen at both festivals are: The War Tapes, by US director Deboran Scranton, winner of the World Premiere section in the Best Documentary Feature category at Tribeca this year; Akeelah and the Bee, written and directed by Doug Atchison, from Tribeca’s New York Premiere section; The Bridge by Eric Steel (World Premiere at Tribeca); The Lew Rudin Way by David Hoffman (World Premiere); and The Mist in the Palm Trees by Carlos Molinero and Lola Salvador, written by Molinero and Salvador Maldonado (International Premiere at Tribeca).