Friday October 23rd at 7:30 pm in Sala Sinopoli at the Auditorium Parco della Musica, the 10th Rome Film Fest will present the last Italian film from the Official Selection, Alaska by Claudio Cupellini. The author of Lezioni di cioccolato and Una vita tranquilla (presented in Rome in 2010), brings to the screen the love story between Fausto and Nadine, who meet by chance on the roof of a hotel in Paris, fragile, lonely, and obsessed by an idea of happiness that seems out of their reach. Fate will have many obstacles and surprises in store for this couple. On the red carpet, with the director, will be Elio Germano and Elena Radonicich.
In the programme of Close Encounters, at 8 pm in Sala Petrassi, Riccardo Muti will be the protagonist of a conversation during which he will talk about the relationship between cinema and music, images, and notes, and will analyse the films that have influenced his life and his career. At 7 pm at the MAXXI, in the Retrospectives section, Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraìn will present his new film El Club, which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival this year and will represent Chile at the next Academy Awards.
At 10:15 pm, Sala Sinopoli will be the venue for the screening of Experimenter by Michael Almereyda, the award-winning director of films such as Twister, Another Girl Another Planet, Nadja, Hamlet and Paradise. In 1961, the social psychologist Stanley Milgram led a series of controversial experiments in behaviour at Yale University. The tests were run on everyday people, who were asked to send increasingly powerful electric shocks to a person tied to a chair in the next room. The purpose of the experiment was to understand human obedience to authority. One day Milgram met Sasha, a former ballerina who lived in New York. They began to see each other and he took her to visit his laboratory at Yale, where his experiments were producing alarming results.
At 10:30 pm in Sala Petrassi, the screening will present another film from the Official Selection, The Propaganda Game by Alvaro Longoria, who made his film debut with the documentary Hijos de las nubes, la ùltima colonia, winner of the Goya prize for Best Documentary in 2013. The film is an in-depth exploration of propaganda, which projects spectators into the ominously secluded and mysterious nation of North Korea. With the most militarized border in the world, and a non-existent flow of impartial information, it is the perfect setting for a propaganda war.
At 7:30 pm, the Teatro Studio will feature Sport by Ahmad Barghouthi, Tal Oved, Lily Sheffy, and Matan Gur: the four directors from Israel and Palestine have made short films (documentary and fiction) on the theme of sport. Produced during the escalation of violence between Israel and Palestine in the summer of 2014 in a spirit of creative freedom, with mixed crews of Palestinians and Israelis, the film, which is part of the Official Selection, offers a personal and courageous point of view on reality. Following, at 9:30 pm, also in the Teatro Studio, there will be the screening of Girls Lost by Alexandra-Therese Keining. The Swedish director, screenwriter, and author brings to the screen a magical, psychedelic story with an unsettling turn of events, that portrays what it means to grow up today from a female point of view. In search of their place in the world, three teenage girls, Kim, Bella and Momo, are constantly bullied by their companions. A seismic shift occurs after they discover a curious plant with magical and mysterious qualities: when they drink its nectar, the girls are temporarily transformed into boys.
Forty years ago in 1975, the bookkeeper Ugo Fantozzi appeared on the silver screen for the first time ever. Behind this extraordinary character, who has become entrenched in Italy’s cultural legacy, was actor and writer Paolo Villaggio. At 5:30 pm in Sala Petrassi, the Rome Film Fest presents Fantozzi by Luciano Salce, in a version restored as part of a joint venture by Eagle Pictures and Premium Cinema.
Two events are on the calendar for the “Journey into the Pixar world” retrospective: at 3 pm, the Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna will host the screening of Up by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson preceded by the short film Partly Cloudy by Peter Sohn, while at 5 pm the Mazda Cinema Hall will show Monsters University by Dan Scanlon, preceded by the short film The Blue Umbrella by Saschka Unsel.
A series of events is scheduled throughout the city, offering second screenings of the films presented at the Rome Film Fest. At the Nuovo Cinema Aquila at 4 pm, there will be a repeat screening of Racing Extinction for the Hidden City section of the line-up, and at 8 pm, the second screening of the film Truth by James Vanderbilt, from the Official Selection.
The Cinema Alcazar theatre will feature the second screenings of several films from the Official Selection: Amama – When a Tree Falls at 4 pm, The End of the Tour at 6 pm, and Full Contact at 10.30 pm. At 8 pm, for the Close Encounters section of the programme, there will be a screening of the film Carol by Todd Haynes.
At the Cineland Ostia theatre, audiences are invited to the repeat screenings of three films from the Official Selection: Registro di classeby Gianni Amelio at 6 pm, Dobbiamo parlare by Sergio Rubini at 8 pm and Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot by Gabriele Mainetti at 10 pm.
The Cinema Atlantic theatre will host the repeat screenings of four films from the Official Selection: Monster Hunt at 3:30 pm, Ouragan, l’odyssée d’un vent3D at 6 pm, Office 3D at 7:45 pm, and The Walk 3D by director Robert Zemeckis at 10 pm.
The Sala Trevi will show the second screenings of two films from the Tribute to Ettore Scola: at 6 pm La terrazza and at 8:45 pm Ridendo e scherzando.
Alice nella Città, the parallel and independent sidebar of the Rome Film Fest, will feature a number of events. At 11 am, it will present Microbe & Gasoline in Sala Sinopoli and Jack of the Red Hearts at the Mazda Cinema Hall. Microbe & Gasoline will then be shown in repeat screenings at the Mazda Cinema Hall at 3 pm and at the Nuovo Cinema Aquila at 6 pm. Also at the Nuovo Cinema Aquila at 10:30 pm, there will be a presentation of the Web Series “Non c’è problema”, created by Luca Ravenna and “Connessioni. 10 incontri sentimentali” written by Enrico Audenino and Francesco Lagialle, directed by Lagialle. Two other films from the section will be screened at the Cinema Avorio theatre: at 6:30 pm Alias Maria and at 10:30 pm Il miracolo by Fabio Mollo. At Cineland Ostia, finally, there will be a repeat screening of Jack of the Red Hearts (at 3:30 pm).