Italiano
Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 25th, at 7 pm in the Sala Sinopoli at the Auditorium Parco della Musica, the 18th edition of the Rome Film Fest will host the screening of La chimera by Alice Rohrwacher (Best of 2023 section). Set in Tuscany in the 1980s (stunningly photographed by Hélène Louvart, who alternates between 35mm, Super 16, and 16mm), the film stars Josh O’Connor, with marvelous turns by Isabella Rossellini, Carol Duarte, and Alba Rohrwacher, La chimera is a dream-like journey that straddles the world of our waking hours and the realm of sleep, eternally poised between ancient and modern. It’s the story of a region and the land’s wondrous secrets, a web the filmmaker weaves inside a fairy-tale, enchanted dimension. Walking the red carpet for the film, roundly praised at its Cannes premiere, will be the director and cast members including Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rossellini, Vincenzo Nemolato, and Alba Rohrwacher.
Following at 10 pm in the Sala Sinopoli, another Best of 2023 title, Kiss the Future by Nenad Čičin-Šain, zooms in on the U2 performance on 23 September 1997, in a free Sarajevo before 45,000 people, keeping the promise they’d made in 1993 on their Zoo TV Tour, when they had wrangled a live linkup with inhabitants of the city then under siege of the Serbian army. Rock music
was virtually a declaration of rebellion, independence, a paean to life itself – all orchestrated by Bill S. Carter, an American activist, journalist and filmmaker whose 2004 memoir Fools Rush In is the source for the film written by Carter and directed by Nenad Čičin-Šain (The Time Being). It’s a heady blend of photos and footage of the war and the music, with recollections from journalist Vesna Andree Zaimović and her husband Senad Zaimović, Bill Clinton, The Edge, Adam Clayton, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (the film’s producers), and Bono, who shouted from the stage: “Viva Sarajevo! Fuck the Past! Kiss the Future!”
On Wednesday the Grand Public section hosts two screenings in the Sala Petrassi.
The first, at 6:30 pm, is Eileen by William Oldroyd, a film that dwells on women’s obsessions,
just like Oldroyd’s first (Lady Macbeth, 2016): it’s a tale of a fatal attraction and a run for freedom that turns noir, courtesy of the recurring dreams and fantasies of the lead, Thomasin McKenzie (Last Night in Soho and The Power of the Dog), while the blonde dark lady who draws her into the intrigue is an irresistible Anne Hathaway, and the script by Ottessa Moshfegh is based on her own novel.
The second, at 9 pm, is Cento domeniche by Antonio Albanese, who, in his fifth directorial effort,
expertly portrays the meek, anxious bewilderment that decent people experience when they come up against systems that are more and more corrupt; his Italy is its honest heartland, fragile but stubborn. Filmed near Lecco, between Albanese’s native Olginate and Garlate, with a cast that includes Albanese himself and Sandra Ceccarelli, Elio De Capitani, Bebo Storti, Maurizio Donadoni, and Giulia Lazzarini.
There are two titles from the Progressive Cinema competition screening tomorrow.
At 4:15 pm, the Sala Petrassi will host the screening of The Hypnosis, a satirical and disturbing first film by Swedish director Ernst De Geer, starring Asta Kamma August (daughter of Pernilla and Bille August) and Herbert Nordrum (star of The Worst Person in the World). It is a grotesque
exploration not only of the world of start-ups, but above all of the volatility and the unpredictable changes in female and male roles.
At 8:30 pm, in the same theater, the title to catch is Like a Son by Nicolas Boukhrief, l’autore di Made in France and Three Days and a Life), a social drama that takes a look at the Roma
community and an intimate portrait of two very different people who both have issues that need to be resolved, featuring another intense performance from Vincent Lindon, who once again, after Philippe Lioret’s Welcome, finds himself tête-à-tête with a young man in difficulty.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 25th, at 4 pm in the Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna, the first in the Paso Doble conversation series unfolds: facing off will be Argentine filmmaker Lisandro Alonso, director of di Eureka, which screened at Cannes 2023 and appears here in the Best of 2023 section, and Italian filmmaker Alessio Rigo De Righi, nominated for a David di Donatello for best debut filmmaker in 2022, for his film The Tale of King Crab, which he co-directed with Matteo Zoppis and which bowed at the Directors’ Fortnight in 2021
The History of Cinema section will be hosting, at the Casa del Cinema (in the Sala Cinecittà), The Saddest Music in the World by Guy Maddin (at 3 pm), a title in the retrospective devoted to Lifetime Achievement Award winner Isabella Rossellini, who declares: “I like working with experimental directors because in a certain sense they remind me of my father, who could have continued to make neo-realist films, turning them into a tearjerker-genre and making a box-office success of it, while on the contrary, he refused to do so and always sought new horizons. When I meet these directors, so obstinate in pursuing their experiments, from Lynch to Maddin, I feel at home.”
On the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of U.S. president John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s historic tour of Europe, “Fuori Orario” gifts the Fest with John Kennedy Night Moves, an eighty-minute-long selection of highlights from the original footage in the RAI archives (Sala Cinecittà at 5 pm).
At 7:30 pm, the same venue hosts La nostra Monument Valley by Alberto Crespi and Steve Della Casa. The richness and variety of the Lazio region have always provided Italian cinema with surprising locations for auteur films, paeplum, westerns, fantasy: the film tells the presence of these places in our cinema.
Last up in the Sala Cinecittà, in the Absolute Beginners section, at 9:30 pm, the film Boatman was Gianfranco Rosi’s first time behind the camera. On his first try, the filmmaker shows he can combine his gifts as a perceptive observer with his talent in crafting and shaping stories, making new inroads into documentary filmmaking that erase ethnic, anthropological, and geographical distances.
The Casa del Cinema also offers an array of repeat screenings on Wednesday. At 11 am, the Sala Cinecittà hosts Ciao Nì! directed by Paolo Poeti; while the Sala Fellini holds a 5:15 pm screening of Force of Evil by Abraham Polonsky; at 7:15 pm a selection of shorts featuring Animals Distract Me, Mammas (ep. 10), and Darwin, What? (ep. 2); and at 9 pm, La voce senza volto by Filippo Soldi.
At MAXXI, for the second year in a row, the “Dialogues on the Future of Cinema” are underway, promoted by the Fondazione Cinema per Roma and ANICA, in collaboration with Cinecittà Spa and SIAE. The conference cycle of seven sessions of Dialogues runs from October 19th to the 26th, at 3:30 pm: a daily appointment, except on Sundays, which is open to the public and the media, on a first-come, first-served basis, consolidating the sleek, straightforward format it tried out in 2022. The title of tomorrow’s conference, on Wednesday, October 25th, is “Can there be a European cinema that captivates Italian and European audiences? The point of view of film critics and journalists”. After introductory remarks by Angelo Argento, president of Cultura Italiae, Wednesday’s round of speakers will feature Pedro Armocida, Fulvia Caprara, Arianna Finos, Paolo Mereghetti, Federico Pontiggia, and Gloria Satta. Moderated by Maria Carolina Terzi.
The ITS Academy Roberto Rossellini consolidates its collaboration with the Fondazione Cinema per Roma at the MAXXI, at 5:30 pm, with a screening of a new documentary, Sinestesie romane, created by the academy’s teachers and students and directed by Massimo Franchi, about artists’ haunts in Rome from the 1950s to today. Clubs, art galleries, artists, musicians, actors and writers, atmospheres, associations: a group of young people seeks to find out how the city and life in Rome have changed over the years.
At 11:15 am, the Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna hosts the first event for the academic year 2023-24 on the Cinema, History & Society programme devoted to Rome and Lazio’s high school students. After introductory remarks by Gian Luca Farinelli (President of the Fondazione Cinema per Roma), Claudia Pratelli (Roma Capitale Councillor for Education, Training and Employment), and Lorenza Lei (Head of the Regione Lazio’s Autonomous Cinema Office), Steve Della Casa will step up to the stage with Enrico Vanzina, Fabrizio Colica, and Giacomo Spaconi from the trio Le Coliche to present a screening of the film Some Like It Hot by Billy Wilder, in a continuousconversation with the high schoolers present. The Progetto Scuola ABC, dedicated to cinema and audio-visual works,
was conceived to recount, on one hand, the 20th century through the stories, images, protagonists and interpreters of great Italian and international cinema, and, on the other hand, show what’s going on in today’s world full of conflicts and contradictions. Cinema, History&Society is promoted by the Region of Lazio as part of the PR FSE+ Lazio 2021-2027 with Roma Capitale through Zètema Progetto Cultura, in partnership with Giornate degli Autori, Cinecittà and the General Directorate of Cinema of the Ministry of Culture.
On Wednesday night at the MAXXI, at 8:30 pm, Nadia Baldi and Ruggero Cappuccio will dialogue with audiences after the screening of Shakespea Re di Napoli. Amidst the sea, the rocks,
the village and the castle, in which a prestigious carnival party is being held, the story of a mysterious figure to whom Shakespeare dedicated his 54 sonnets unfolds. The playwright had taken him to England to have him play his heroines.
The short film Riscrivere, promoted by MSD Italia, produced by Brandon Box, and directed by Mattia Lunardi, will be presented at 6:30 pm in the Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna. Reaching beyond simple cinematic storytelling, this short film seeks to provide information and raise awareness on the HPV (Human Papillomavirus) virus and how to prevent it, using thestory of the young protagonist Linda as a vehicle to address a theme that is most important to public health. Two roundtables will discuss the screening of the short.
For the seventh year in a row, the sala MediCinema at the Gemelli Hospital is one of several venues around the city for the eighteenth edition of Rome’s annual film festival. In-house patients have the chance to catch some Fest titles and meet actors and directors before each screening. The first screening will be held tomorrow, Wednesday, October 25th at 4 pm, and the film is A la Recherche, directed by Giulio Base and starring Giulio Base and Anne Parillaud, iconic French film star and unforgettable her in role in Nikita by Luc Besson. Both will be on hand at the Sala MediCinema to introduce the film and dialogue with the patients present.
The eighteenth edition of the Film Fest will bring an ample selection of films and talks to the prisons in Lazio. Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 25th at 2:15 pm, at the Germana Stefanini Women’s Ward at Rebibbia prison, screenwriters Giulia Calenda and Furio Andreotti will introduce the screening of C’è ancora domani, the opening film at the 2023 Fest. Video greetings from the director, Paola Cortellesi, will be broadcast in the theater.
Through Sunday, October 29th, the Nuovo Cinema Aquila will be hosting repeat screenings of some of the titles on the Film Fest lineup. At 9 pm on Wednesday, the film is Wanted by Fabrizio Ferraro, which, through the ambiguous interweaving of three women’s lives, attempts to interrogate the film genre and the mechanisms of power.
And on Wednesday, October 25th, at the Cinema Nuovo Sacher, screenings of Fest titles handpicked by Nanni Moretti continue: at 4 pm, The Monk and the Gun by Pawo Choyning Dorji, at 6:15 pm The Persian Version by Maryam Keshavarz, and at 9 pm the director Margherita Buy will meet the audience for the screening of Volare.
There’s an abundance of repeat screenings of the 18th Film Fest’s titles ongoing at the Cinema Giulio Cesare. In Sala 1, at 7 pm, After the Fire by Mehdi Fikri; at 6:30 pm, Tehachapi by JR; at 9 pm Like a Son by Nicolas Boukhrief. Over in Sala 3, the lineup features The Hypnosis (at 5 pm) by Ernst De Geer, La chimera by Alice Rohrwacher (at 7:15 pm), and Kiss the Future by Nenad Čičin-Šain (at 10:30 pm). Three repeat screenings unspool in Sala 5 as well: Wanted by Fabrizio Ferraro (at 5 pm), Eileen by William Oldroyd (at 7:30 pm), and Cento domeniche by Antonio Albanese (at 9:30 pm). Sala 7 has two screenings for Film Fest audiences: at 3:30 pm, Allo la France by Floriane Devigne, and The Royal Hotel by Kitty Green, at 5:30 pm.
