#RomaFF14 | October 17th, Motherless Brooklyn to kick off the Official Selection lineup

On Thursday, October 17th, the 14^th Rome Film Fest gets underway and runs until October 27^th. The event, produced by Fondazione Cinema per Roma, unfolds under the guidance of Artistic Director Antonio Monda, Fondazione Cinema per Roma President Laura Delli Colli, and General Director Francesca Via. The Auditorium Parco della Musica will once again be the nerve centre of the Fest, with its screening theatres and striking red carpet. As always, the Fest will also play out at numerous locations and venues across the city, from the centre to the outskirts.
At 7:30 pm, the Sala Sinopoli at the Auditorium Parco della Musica hosts the opening film of the 2019 Rome Film Fest, Motherless Brooklyn, directed by Edward Norton. “Italian cinema has had an enormous impact on my own tastes and aspirations as a filmmaker,” Norton stated, “and so to have my film open the fest in Rome is truly a fantasy made real. It’s truly a great honor, and I’m so delighted. And I believe, though this is an American epic and a New York noir, that Italian audiences will quickly feel the resonance of the themes within their own recent experience.”
Three-time Oscar nominee Edward Norton (Birdman or [the Unexpected Virtue of Innocence], American History X, Primal Fear) directed, wrote, produced and stars in Motherless Brooklyn. Norton plays Lionel Essrog, a lonely private detective living with Tourette Syndrome, who ventures to solve the murder of his mentor and only friend, Frank Minna. Armed only with a few clues and the engine of his obsessive mind, Lionel unravels closely guarded secrets that hold the fate of New York in the balance. In a mystery that carries him from gin-soaked jazz clubs in Harlem to the hard-edged slums of Brooklyn and, finally, into the gilded halls of New York’s power brokers, Lionel contends with thugs, corruption and the most dangerous man in the city to honor his friend and save the woman who might be his own salvation.
At 7 pm on Thursday, the red carpet will see Edward Norton arrive with Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Bobby Cannavale. Motherless Brooklyn will have two repeat screenings the same evening: at 8 pm in the Sala Petrassi and at 9 pm in the Frecciarossa Cinema Hall.
The onstage conversations series Close Encounters also kicks off on Thursday. At 5 pm, Ethan Coen – filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, editor and playwright all in one – will take the stage in the Sala Petrassi to retrace the steps of his thirty-odd-year-long career. Together with his brother Joel, Ethan has an extraordinary oeuvre to his credit, the hallmarks of which are an unsparing irony and cynicism that make for a fresh and quite original take on film today. The duo directed multiple-award-winning hits such as Blood Simple, The Man Who Wasn’t There, The Big Lebowski, and Ladykillers. Fargo earned them an Oscar® for Best Original Screenplay and another for Best Actress, which went to Frances McDormand, while their No Country for Old Men netted them three Oscars®, for Best Film, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, as well as Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem).
The first day of the 14^th Rome Film Fest will also feature the opening of the exhibition “Cecchi Gori: An Italian Family” in the foyer of the Sala Sinopoli. Running for the duration of the Fest, through October 27, the show draws entirely on never-before-seen materials discovered in the process of making the documentary of the same name, produced by Giuseppe Lepore and directed by Simone Isola and Marco Spagnoli. It aims to reconstruct the history of one of the most important production houses in the Italian film industry. The photographs on view during the exhibition come from Vittorio Cecchi Gori’s personal archives and have never been seen before except by family members and Cecchi Gori’s inner circle. They are an invaluable testament to the more mainstream films turned out by the industry, from the comedies of the 1960s, made by Dino Risi, Alberto Sordi and Alberto Lattuada, to the new generation of comedians in the 80s and the international hits Vittorio Cecchi Gori scored in the 90s.