President of the Republic Giorgio Napoletano will attend tonight’s RomeFilmFest screening of the restored copy of Rome, Open City by Roberto Rossellini, at 8:30 pm at the Teatro Studio of the Auditorium, announced festival president Goffredo Bettini. Rome, Open City is once again available to audiences in all its glory thanks to a restoration by the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in collaboration with the Venice Biennale and the RomeFilmFest. President Napoletano, who with his presence at the screening intends to demonstrate his great commitment to Italian cinema, will close a day of celebrations dedicated to one of the greatest film of Italian Neorealism.
Rome, Open City is this year celebrating 60 years since its tremendous success at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival, and 2006 also marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Rossellini, the occasion for which the Biennale and festival restored the film.

The day of festivities opened this morning with a round table coordinated by Gianni Borgna, Rome’s City Council Head of Cultural Policies, and by Sergio Toffetti, Curator of the Cineteca Nazionale. Round table speakers included, among others, Mino Argentieri, Adriano Aprà, David Bruni, Callisto Cosulich and Lucio Villari.

The participants bore testimony to the historical period in which Rossellini’s masterpiece was made, and their memories of the first time they saw the film. “It was a great civil moment that gave us back one of the most dramatic periods of our past,” said Borgna. Lastly, Gosetti announced the screening of a documentary on Saturday, October 21, at 6:30 pm, to close the festival under the sign of the father of Neorealism.