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FESTIVALS Italy

RIFF discovers invisible cinema

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For it’s eighth edition, RIFF – Rome Independent Film Festival! has moved to the Nuovo Cinema Aquila, gaining a new cinema and one more day of programming. Held this year from March 19-27, RIFF was founded to give visibility to Italian and international independent cinema that has difficulty getting released.

It is no coincidence, then, that the event’s press conference turned into a debate on public film funding that involved representatives of the City of Rome and the Lazio Region, and head of Kubla Khan production company Umberto Massa, the man who launched Matteo Garrone and Francesco Patierno.

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This year, RIFF is presenting five films in the national competition, including Marco Carniti’s Sleeping Around [+see also:
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, Stefano Coletta’s Appuntamento a Ora Insolita (starring Giulio Scarpati, Beppe Fiorello and Ricky Tognazzi) and Narciso by Marcello and Dario Baldi, in which esteemed actor Roberto Herlitzka plays an 84-year-old former resistance fighter dealing with a Muslim daughter-in-law.

There is also the new project by the The Coproducers, Miss Julie, a performance of the Strindberg play staged by the Actors’ Center of Rome and shot and directed by Michael Margotta; the debut film Tutti Intorno a Linda by the Sgambellone sisters, a comedy starring Maria Victoria Di Pace; and Salvatore Maira’s Valzer [+see also:
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, which will close the festival.

International titles include Steve McQueen’s Hunger [+see also:
film review
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interview: Laura Hastings-Smith Rob…
interview: Steve McQueen
film profile
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(winner of the Cannes Caméra d’Or) and Johan Kramer’s Sing for Darfur, winner of the New Vision prize and the festival’s closing night film, on an international concert organised in Barcelona to help the people of Darfur.

As is customary, RIFF will hold tributes (to the Tokyo Short Film Festival and GecoFilmFest), a Human Rights event (with associations Save the Children and Pangea Onlus) and a European Forum, which this year brings together producers of the project Producer on the Move.

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