Italiano
The History of Cinema section will feature the world premiere of Callas, Paris, 1958, introduced by the director Tom Volf, and Profondo Argento by Giancarlo Rolandi and Steve Della Casa: on stage, with the two authors, Dario Argento and Luciano Tovoli.
Zucchero – Sugar Fornaciari by Valentina Zanella and Giangiacomo De Stefano will premiere tomorrow, Saturday October 21st, at the eighteenth Rome Film Fest. The documentary film, one of the Special Screenings to be presented at 9:30 pm in Sala Sinopoli of the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone, tells the story of this remarkable artist in his own words and those of his colleagues and friends Bono, Sting, Brian May, Paul Young, Andrea Bocelli, Salmo, Francesco Guccini, Francesco De Gregori, Roberto Baggio, Jack Savoretti, Don Was, Randy Jackson and Corrado Rustici. A journey into the soul which, thanks to images from Zucchero’s private archives and from the “World Wild Tour”, his last triumphant world tour, goes beyond the portrait of a world-class musician to reach down into the doubts and fragilities of the man. Zucchero will be on the Fest’s red carpet at 8:45 pm.
Two more films from the Special Screenings section are scheduled for today.
At 4 pm, Sala Sinopoli will host the screening of La Bussola – Il collezionista di stelle by Andrea Soldani. In repertory video footage and exclusive interviews, the documentary looks into the most important club in the history of Italian music and the man who, with his entrepreneurial spirit, revolutionised Italy’s jet set: Sergio Bernardini. From the 1970s to the 1980s, La Bussola, the historic club in Marina di Pietrasanta, in Versiila, became a veritable cultural crossroads.
At 9 pm at the MAXXI, there will be a screening of High & Low: John Galliano by Kevin Macdonald. The fashion designer John Galliano worked for the Maisons Givenchy and Dior for many years, revolutionising the world of fashion, but in 2011 his career was suddenly cut short after he was recorded on video spouting antisemitic and racist insults. The film follows his fall and his subsequent return.
At 6:30 pm, for the Best of 2023 section, Sala Sinopoli will host the screening of La Passion de Dodin Bouffant by Trần Anh Hùng, winner of the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival 2023. The Franco-Vietnamese author of The Scent of Green Papaya, Cyclo and Norwegian Wood conveys the carnal and spiritual passion kindled by cuisine through a sinuous participation in the rituals of the couple Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel. A love letter to cooking, love, and the love for France, for its culture, its countryside, its colours, its painters. Juliette Binoche will be on the red carpet at 5:45 pm.
At 5 pm in Sala Petrassi, the audience is invited to attend the Masterclass held by Jonathan Glazer: after working on the music videos of extraordinary artists such as Massive Attack, Radiohead and Jamiroquai, the director came to the big screen with films such as Birth and Under the Skin. Glazer comes to the Rome Film Fest with his new film The Zone of Interest, winner of the Special Grand Jury Prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.
The Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna will host two films in the programme of the Progressive Cinema Competition.
At 3:30 pm, the screening will feature One Day All This Will Be Yours by Andreas Ohman, author of Simple Simon, one of the eight films shortlisted for the 2010 Oscars®. The Swedish director explores themes such as returning home, the courage to face up to the past and personal growth. The film is a mix of light and shadow, bitter humourism and unresolved grief, in which the animated parts cast light on the mindset of the protagonist, played by Karin Franz Körlof.
At 6 pm, the screening features Un Amor by Isabel Coixet. In the film, Nat is a translator and every day she must translate the terrible and tragic stories of immigrant women. Burnt out, she gives it all up and goes to live in La Escapa, a small town in rural Spain. Andreas is the brawny neighbour who offers to repair her roof. In exchange for something. A dark and unpredictable film adapted from the bestseller by Sara Mesa.
Two films from the Grand Public section are to be screened in Sala Petrassi.
At 7 pm, the feature is Palazzina Laf, the directorial debut of Michele Riondino. LAF is an acronym for Laminatoio a Freddo – the cold rolling mill: LAF was a building in which, in the 1990s, the owners and management of the ILVA factory in Taranto decided to exile the office workers who had opposed the ‘novation’ of their contract, which demoted them to factory workers. They couldn’t fire them, so they shunted them off to the LAF, to twiddle their thumbs.
At 9:15 pm, the public is invited to view Fingernails by Christos Nikou. In the future, Anna and her partner Ryan have achieved every couple’s dream: they have a document that certifies that theirs is true love. But this is just the beginning of their search. For his English-language debut, the Greek director returns with a tragicomic dystopian story about human sentiments with Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed and Jeremy Allen White.
The MAXXI will host two films from the Freestyle section.
At 5:30 pm, there will be a screening of And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine by Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck. The two Swedish filmmakers focus their lens on the exasperated obsession that has entranced mankind, that of looking at the world through the eye of the camera, and show how in only two hundred years we have gone from the photograph of a courtyard to the creation of a multi-billion dollar industry.
At 8:30 pm, the screening will feature Obsessed with Light by Zeva Oelbaum and Sabine Krayenbühl. The documentary tells the story of Loïe Fuller (1862-1928), the essential historic pioneer of modern dance, and the influence that her work has had on today’s culture and on artists such as Taylor Swift, Shakira and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Also at the MAXXI, for the second year in a row, the “Dialogues on the future of cinema” will be held during the Rome Film Fest, promoted by the Fondazione Cinema per Roma and ANICA, in collaboration with Cinecittà Spa and SIAE. The series of Dialogues in seven episodes will take place from October 19th to October 26th at 3:30 pm: every day, except for Sunday, they will be open to the public and to the media, on a first come first served basis, consolidating the lean and linear format tested in 2022. The title of tomorrow’s conference, Saturday October 21st, will be “Can there be an Italian cinema that captivates the Italian and European audience? The point of view of actresses and directors”. The speakers will include Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Paola Cortellesi, Ginevra Elkann, Valeria Golino, Kasja Smutniak and Jasmine Trinca. Moderator Piera Detassis.
Through October 29th, Casa del Cinema will host the wide-ranging programme of the History of Cinema section.
Giuliano Montaldo, to whom the eighteenth Rome Film Fest is dedicated, will be commemorated in an event with free admission to be held tomorrow, Saturday October 21st at 3 pm in Sala Cinecittà, organised in collaboration with the Montaldo family.
At 5 pm in Sala Cinecittà, as part of the tribute to Maria Callas, there will be a screening of Medea by Pier Paolo Pasolini. In the film, like in the opera, Maria Callas is the body and soul of Medea, she lives, she is illuded, she suffers, she even carries out the most horrid of homicides. But she does not sing, she speaks: this restoration will allow us to hear Maria Callas’ real voice, in the performance she gave for Pasolini in Italian. The film was initially released with the voice of Rita Savagnone: the producer Franco Rossellini pressured the director to dub Callas for the Italian theatre circuit, fearing that her “foreign” accent would bother audiences. Pasolini acquiesced, but insisted and obtained that the soprano’s original voice be retained for the editions released abroad.
The tribute ends at 7:30 pm (Sala Cinecittà) with an exceptional event, the world premiere of Callas, Paris, 1958 by Tom Volf. In December 1958 Maria Callas made her debut at the Opéra de Paris in a concert that was destined to be legendary and turned out to be one of the musical events of the century. That concert was filmed and broadcast live across Europe. Thanks to the discovery of the original footage, the film takes its audiences straight into the heart of that event, offering images restored in 4K HD and colorised by Composite Films, which worked with the original reels of the Callas Foundation, relying on colour photos of the event. The sound was restored from sources taken directly from Maria Callas’ personal archives. The sound mixing and mastering were entrusted to the expert hands of Miraval Studios.
There are two screenings on the programme tomorrow that are part of the tribute to Dario Argento, one of the most highly acclaimed Italian directors at the global level, and an essential reference for filmmakers around the world. Throughout his career, he has shown great originality in rethinking film genres that were rarely taken up by Italian filmmakers, such as detective stories, thrillers and horror films, in masterpieces such as Deep Red (Profondo Rosso) which will be screened on Saturday October 21st at 11:15 pm in Sala Cinecittà. The film will be preceded at 9:30 pm by the documentary Profondo Argento by Giancarlo Rolandi and Steve Della Casa, a new in-depth portrait of the great director, filled with photos and documents from his jealously guarded personal archives. Dario Argento and cinematographer Luciano Tovoli will be in attendance.
On the occasion of the Lifetime Achievement Award to Isabella Rossellini, the Rome Film Fest gave the artist Carte Blanche to put together a series of films she has selected to present to the public: tomorrow at 11 am in Sala Cinecittà, the screening will feature Blue Velvet, the masterpiece by David Lynch.
At 5:30 pm finally, Sala Fellini will host the repeat screening of Ovosodo by Paolo Virzì, in the version restored by Infinity+.
The Teatro Palladium, the historical Roman movie theatre owned by the Università Roma Tre, returns as one of the venues of the eighteenth Rome Film Fest. Tomorrow, Saturday October 21st at 8 pm, there will be a screening of Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg by Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill. The documentary, based on the unpublished memoirs of Anita Pallenberg and narrated by Scarlett Johansson, tells the story of an inveterate rock’n’roller, an actress, muse and mother who rose to fame in the 1960s and 70s. Anita introduces us into her world, with the help of friends and family, including her children Marlon and Angela and their father Keith Richards. Home movies and family photos explore life with the Rolling Stones, in a bittersweet story that alternates between triumph and heartbreak.
There are three films in the programme of the Cinema Nuovo Sacher.
At 4:30 pm, the first screening will feature La erecciòn de Toribio Bardelli by Adrián Saba (at 4:30 pm). The director will be in the theatre to introduce the screening to the public. Set in the melancholy city of Lima mostly at night, the film is a grotesque play of character, sometimes heart-rending sometimes ironic, by the most promising of young Peruvian directors. It stars Gustavo Bueno and Gisela Ponce de Leòn. At 6:15 pm, it will be followed by Death is a Problem for the Living: the director Teemu Nikki and the cast will present the screening to the spectators. In the film, Risto is a gambler, and Arto is missing a big chunk of his brain, one likes jazz, the other Finnish rock from the Eighties, and both are living a disastrous life. Between comedy and noir, Kaurismäki and early Winding Refn, the new feature-length film by the Finnish director is a sanguine and laconic buddy movie. At 9 pm, the director Francesco Munzi will present his new film Kripton to the public. It arose out of a series of encounters within two psychiatric institutions on the outskirts of Rome, with young men and women suffering from psychiatric disorders to whom he grew increasingly close, six young people who voluntarily chose to be hospitalised and struggle with various disorders.
Through October 24th, Cinema Barberini will host a retrospective dedicated to the great master Federico Fellini, thirty years after his death: tomorrow Saturday October 21st at 3 pm the screening will feature La dolce vita (1960).
The programme of repeat screenings of the Rome Film Fest continues at the Cinema Giulio Cesare. In Sala 1, at 4 pm, the screening will feature One Day All This Will Be Yours by Andreas Öhman, at 6:30 pm Un amor by Isabel Coixet and at 9:30 pm High & Low: John Galliano by Kevin Macdonald. Sala 3 will host La Bussola – Il collezionista di stelle by Andrea Soldani (4:30 pm), La Passion de Dodin Bouffant by Trần Anh Hùng (at 7 pm) and Zucchero – Sugar Fornaciari by Valentina Zanella and Giangiacomo De Stefano (at 10 pm). There will also be three repeat screenings in Sala 5: at 5 pm the screening will be of Quattro quinti by Stefano Urbanetti, at 7:30 pm Palazzina LAF by Michele Riondino and at 9:45 pm Fingernails by Christos Nikou. Finally, Sala 7 at 3:30 pm will host Rule of Two Walls by David Gutnik, at 5:30 pm Kim’s Video by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin.
During the course of the Rome Film Fest there will be a new space dedicated to cinema, in collaboration with the Fondazione Cinema per Roma. The Fuori Festa will be set up at the Hotel St. Regis, a few steps away from Via Veneto. Fuori Festa is open to all accredited visitors of the Rome Film Fest, to the guests of the St. Regis Hotel, in addition to producers, distributors and journalists. Info: https://www.fuorifesta.it/.
