Italiano
The Rome Film Fest presents the world premiere preview of the series Django directed by Francesca Comencini: the first two episodes will be screened tomorrow, Sunday October 16th at 7:30 pm in Sala Sinopoli at the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone. Francesca Comencini, whose favourite films include The Wild Bunch by Sam Peckinpah, harnesses her usual grit as the artistic director (and director of the first episodes) of the ten-episode series filmed in Romania, drawing inspiration from the 1966 cult movie of the same name by Sergio Corbucci. With an international cast led by Matthias Schoenaerts, Noomi Rapace and Nicholas Pinnock, Django is a western that evolves from the desire for revenge and subjugation towards the need to start over.
At 5 pm, in the Grand Public section, Sala Sinopoli will host the screening of Astolfo by Gianni De Gregorio who, displays his usual humorous flair as a director in making things right following the romantic mishaps in his previous The Salt of Life. Stefania Sandrelli positively glows. At 10 pm, in the same theatre for the Gran Public section, the featured screening will be Butcher’s Crossing by Gabe Polsky. Adapted from the novel of the same name by John Williams (the author of Augustus and Stoner, an international literary sensation), Butcher’s Crossing is a gripping comment on human nature, obsession, masculinity and man’s relationship with his natural environment. It’s a sublime yet nightmarish adventure, serving up dark truths that plunge men into madness.
In addition to the series Django, five other films from the Freestyle section will be featured.
At 4 pm in Sala Petrassi, there will be a screening of Daniel Pennac: ho visto Maradona! by Ximo Solano. The French Daniel Pennac takes on one of the greatest sportsmen of all time: the legend, the icon, “Saint Diego” and his impact on the lives and life stories of ordinary people as well as his loyal fans. In a creative, surreal investigation set in Naples, Pennac puts together a stage performance with his Compagnie MIA and tracks down information and anecdotes about Maradona around the city. Naples turns into the stage and the megaphone for the legend himself. At the end of the screening, Daniel Pennac will be the guest in an encounter with the public.
At 7 pm in the same theatre, the public is invited to view La divina cometa: the director Mimmo Paladino, one of the great contemporary artists, returns to film – sixteen years after Quijote – with a film that is a cross between the Inferno of the Divine Comedy and the tradition of the Neapolitan nativity scene.
At 9 pm the Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna will be the venue for the presentation of Bassifondi, the film debut by Francesco Pividori, aka Trash Secco, the artist and videomaker for Achille Lauro, Marracash, Ketama 126. The film, written by Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, focuses on two homeless men, Romeo and Callisto, who live among the rats and otters under a bridge, in a Rome that is “chromatically decomposing”.
At the MAXXI (at 5:30 pm), in La Paz del future Francesco Clerici and Luca Previtali take us on a personal, political and artistic journey, following the figure of Janet Pavone, an Italian-American muralist who joined the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua in the 1980s. At 8:30 pm, the featured screening will be Il maledetto by Giulio Base, freely inspired by one of the great literary masterpieces, Macbeth: the director reinterprets the play in a contemporary and viscerally Italian key, featuring a prodigious, sanguine protagonist and a carnal and deadly Lady Macbeth.
Two films from the Progressive Cinema Competition are in the day’s programme.
At 9:30 pm in Sala Petrassi, there will be a screening of La Tour by Guillaume Nicloux. addresses the dystopian with one eye to J.G. Ballard (High-Rise, but not only) and the other to the caustic spirit of Michel Houellebecq, whose “kidnapping” he staged in 2014, and whom he thanks in the closing credits. At 3:30 pm in the Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna, the screening will feature Foudre by Carmen Jaquier, the story of a progressive assertion of independence, will and desire, in which the repressive gloom of the atmosphere and the beliefs is progressively chipped away by the vital energy of the main character and her three childhood friends.
At 11:30 am, in the Absolute Beginners section, Stephen Frears will meet the audience to talk about My Beautiful Laundrette, the film that marked the debut of his brilliant career. “When Kureishi brought me the treatment for My Beautiful Laundrette, that’s where he came from: the son of a Pakistani and a white mother, he was a middle-class “paki” who lived in one of the so-called “mixed areas” of London, which are the best, and the most alive. At first, I felt the script wasn’t a good fit for me. Then I started laughing and I couldn’t stop – explained the director. I never thought this was a film about racial issues: I was interested in studying Thatcherism and the economic system. There was irony in these Pakistanis who supported Thatcher, which made the film even more bizarre”. The film will be screened at 8:30 pm in Sala Kodak at the Casa del Cinema.
The collaboration continues between the Fondazione Cinema per Roma and Le Donne del Muro Alto: once again this year, the company of actresses formerly serving time in prison and admitted to alternative measures to detention, will perform at the Rome Film Fest under the direction of Francesca Tricarico. For the one hundredth anniversary of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s birth, the company Le Donne del Muro Alto, directed by Francesca Tricarico with the actresses formerly serving time in prison and admitted to alternative measures to detention from the Women’s Prison of Rebibbia, decided to develop their own personal reinterpretation of the myth of Medea, half-serious and half-facetious, in “Medea in Sartoria”. The performance will begin at the MAXXI at 3:30 pm.
There are many films in the line-up of the day at the Casa del Cinema. They start at 10:45 am with the screening of Maurice, a tribute to the cinema of James Ivory, winner of the 2022 Rome Film Fest’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and continue at 3:30 pm with The Long Hot Summer, a film in the retrospective “Ms. Woodward & Mr. Newman”. At 6 pm, the screening will feature La porta del cielo by Vittorio di Sica in the new restored version, with the participation of Christian De Sica, who will also present the film that will immediately follow, Argento puro by Matteo Ceccarelli, the story of the production and restoration of La porta del cielo. At 9 pm, the director Gianni Amelio will present to the audience the restored version of one of his greatest hits, The Stolen Children, winner of the Jury Grand Prix Special at the 45th Cannes Film Festival.
At 2:45 pm, at 5:15 pm and at 6:30 pm and 8:30 pm in Sala Kodak, there will be repeat screenings of The Remains of the Day by James Ivory, The Last Movie Stars (episode 1) and The Three Faces of Eve by Nunnally Johnson.
The programme of repeat screenings at the Cinema Giulio Cesare movie theatres will feature, in Sala 1 at 10 am, Umberto Eco – La Biblioteca del Mondo, at 12 noon Causeway, at 4 pm, Foudre and at 6:30 pm Houria; in Sala 3, Astolfo (5:30 pm), Django (8 pm) and Butcher’s Crossing (10.30 pm) are the featured films. In Sala 5, at 4:30 pm, at 7:30 pm and at 10 pm, the featured screenings will be Daniel Pennac: ho visto Maradona!, La divina cometa and La Tour. In Sala 7, finally, there will be a screening of Amate sponde (at 4 pm).
