07/10/2010

The Rome International Film Festival (October 28-November 5) turns five this year and consolidates its reputation as a mainstream event with its 58% regular audiences alongside professional visitors. The festival "ages by rejuvenating", according to artistic director Piera Detassis, due to the ever decreasing average age of the filmmakers, the numerous first and second films, and the independent titles that outnumber major studio productions.

With a budget of €13.5m, 70% of which comes from 160 private sponsors, the festival this year offers 146 features and documentaries of 16 are in competition in the Official Selection.

There are four Italian titles that are vying for the Marc’Aurelio Award given out by an international jury (see news): Claudio Cupellini’s Una vita tranquilla [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Claudio Cupellini
film profile], starring Toni Servillo, who also acts in German; Guido Chiesa’s Io sono con te, on Mary of Nazareth; Valerio Jalongo’s La scuola è finita with Valeria Golino; and the Indian co-production Gangor by Italo Spinelli, on the Maoist rebels of India.

Strong, current themes run through the films in and out of competition, from everyday obsessions, to family horrors and historical scandals, such as on the children deported from the UK to Australia in Oranges and Sunshine by Jim Loach, son of Ken, and the totalitarianism of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the French/Chinese co-production The Back by Liu Bingjian. Or the euthanasia of the politically incorrect and ironic Kill Me Please [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (Belgium) by Olias Barco; the Melbourne underworld in David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom; 20-something Iranians in Hosein Keshavarz’s Dog Sweat; and the protests of female London factory workers against sexual discrimination in 1968 London in We Want Sex by Nigel Cole.

The Competition programme includes two US films: Massy Tadjedin’s Last Night, with Keira Knightley and Eva Mendes, and John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole, featuring Nicole Kidman, who also makes her producing debut. The selection is rounded out by Chris Kraus’s The Poll Diaries [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Chris Kraus
film profile] (Germany/Austria/Estonia), Yu-Hsiu Camille Chen’s Little Sparrows (Australia), Five Day Shelter by Ireland’s Ger Leonard, María Novaro’s Las buenas hierbas (Mexico), In a Better World [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Danish director Susanne Bier and The Flowers of Kirkuk by international citizen Fariborz Kamkari.

Out-of-competition titles include Crime d'amour [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the last film by Alain Corneau, who passed away in August; Guillaume Canet’s Les Petits mouchoirs [+see also:
trailer
film profile]; Ricky Tognazzi’s Il padre e lo straniero [+see also:
trailer
film profile]; Eric Lartigau’s L'Homme qui voulait vivre sa vie [+see also:
trailer
film profile]; US director Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right, starring Julianne Moore (the recipient of this year’s Acting Award); and the 70-minute pilot of an HBO series, Boardwalk Empire, directed by Martin Scorsese (and bought for Italy by Sky).

Lastly, the Festival will pay homage to one of the greatest Italian actors of the 20th century, Ugo Tognazzi, 20 years after his passing.

(Translated from Italian)