Today, Friday November 15^th, is the closing day of the competition of the 8^th Rome Film Festival. Three films are scheduled for screening in Sala Sinopoli. At 7:00 pm, Another Me, the film adaptation of the eponymous novel by writer Cathy MacPhail. The film is directed by the Spanish director and screenwriter Isabel Coixet, renowned internationally for films such as My Life Without Me (in Competition at the Berlin Film Festival, winner of two Goya Awards), The Secret Life of Words (presented at the Venice International Film Festival and winner of four Goya awards, including Best Film and Best Director), Elegy and Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (in competition at the Cannes Film Festival). Another Me is the film adaptation of the eponymous novel by writer Cathy MacPhail and tells the story of an ordinary teenager whose daily routine slowly begins to fall apart when an unsettling suspicion begins to creep into her mind. Who is that mysterious “double” who is persecuting her, trying to steal not only her identity but her life too? Walking the red carpet at 6:30 pm, will be the star Sophie Turner, who became famous as an actress in the television series “Games of Thrones”, and Gregg Skulkin, the English actor who has starred in TV series such as “As the Bell Rings”, “The Heavy”, “Wizards of Waverly Street”. At 10:00 pm, there will be the screening of the new film The Mole Song – Undercover Agent Reiji (Mogura no uta) by Takashi Miike, one of the most original Chinese filmmakers on the contemporary international scene, student of the famous Imamura Shohei and author of films that have won awards at the major international film festivals:Audition (Ôdishon, International Critics’ Award at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam),Gozu (Gokudo kyofu dai-gekijo: Gozu, in the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at Cannes), Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (46-okunen no koi, Berlin Film Festival), The Thirteen Assassins (Jûsan-nin no shikaku, in competition at the Venice Film Festival) and Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (Ichimei, in competition at the Cannes Film Festival), Lesson of the Evil (Aku no kyôten, Rome Film Festival). In Mogura no uta, Takashi Miike reiterates the nervous, violent and ironic style that brought him world fame, in the story of a young policemen who is secretly entrusted with the mission of going undercover to join a criminal organization and arrest a Yakuza boss.

At 5:00 pm the programme features the screening of Tir, the first narrative film by Alberto Fasulo, the director of the documentary White Noise (Rumore bianco), selected for many international festivals and distributed in movie theatres around Italy. In his latest work, Fasulo talks about the current crisis as seen through the eyes of a former professor who becomes a trucker to solve his economic problems. With his efficiency, his obstinacy, his good will, the protagonist is able to dignify a job that is more and more alienating, absurd, enslaving.

For the CinemaXXI Competition, Sala Petrassi (10:30 pm) will host Zanj Revolution (Thwara Zanj)by Tariq Teguia. The Algerian director – who presented his first feature-length film Rome Rather Than You (Roma wa la n’touma) at the Venice International Film Festival in the Orizzonti section, and won the Fipresci award, also in Venice, for the film in Competition Gabbla – is a half-real half-fictional reconstruction of the trail of ancient and forgotten uprisings against the Abbasid Caliphate, in Iraq between the VIIIth and IXth centuries, by the Zanj, the black slaves responsible for irrigating the lands of the lower Euphrates. The investigation led him to Beirut, the city which was once the symbol of the hopes and struggles of the entire Arab world. A film that confirms Tariq Teguia as the “Godard of the Arab world”.

Also in competition at CinemaXXI, the MAXXI museum (5:00 pm), the competition screenings will feature The Face (El rostro) by Gustavo Fontàn and the medium-length film The Incomplete (Der Unfertige) by Jan Soldat. In El rostro, the Argentine director, writer and poet, winner of the Konex Prize for documentary cinema, author of the award-winning feature-length film Where the Sun Sets (Donde cae el sole) and co-screenwriter of The Southern Cross (La cruz del Sur) by Pablo Reyero, makes a film about memory: a man in a small boat reaches an island on the Paranà river and heads towards a place where there is a house or a small village. There’s nothing there any more. Soon others will come to the island to prepare a feast: wife, father, friends, children. There are only imperceptible traces of something old and lost: the place he was born. His presence causes things in that abandoned place to materialize: cabins and tables, animals and canoes. Der Unfertige by Jan Soldat, author of Geliebt, a documentary on zoophilia presented at the Berlinale Shorts, and Zucht und Ordnung (Berlin Film Festival), brings to the screen Klaus Johannes Wolf, who lives like a slave.

Tied to his bed, he talks about being a slave, about his parents and what it means to be nude. At the end, he leaves everything behind to join a slave camp, to perfect his existence as a slave and become a perfect servant.

Also at the MAXXI (at 8:00 pm) the public is invited to attend the screening of Birmingenmskij, Ornament 2 by Andrei Silvestrov, a director and producer for over twenty years, and Yuri Leiderman, a writer, poet, artist, actor, critic. This is the “second part” of a film that caused a stir in Venice in the 2011Orizzonti section and is a criticism modern civilization, applying the technological and linguistic peculiarities of the figurative arts to film.

The Competition of Prospettive Doc Italia presents (Teatro Studio, 5:00 pm) the screening of the documentary Off Road (Fuoristrada) by Elisa Amoruso. The young director and screenwriter wrote the short films Aria, winner of the David di Donatello, the Nastro D’Argento by the National Syndicate of Italian Journalists and the Jameson European Award; the short film Adil and Yusuf, in Competition at the Venice International Film Festival (nominated for the David di Donatello), Good Morning, Aman by Claudio Noce, in competition at the Venice Film Festival, Passione sinistra by Marco Ponti and La foresta di ghiaccio by Claudio Noce with Emir Kusturica.

At the MAXXI, at 10:00 am, a round-table discussion was held entitled “Genre cinema in Italy yesterday and today” for a comprehensive reflection on Italian “cinema di genere”. Disdained by the cultural critics, it has come back with a vengeance thanks to the enthusiasm of a small group of determined critics who studied it and sang its praises, ignoring many a self-righteous objection. The round-table discussion – which included , along with the “Tarantinian italophile” Eli Roth, Enzo G. Castellari, Umberto Lenzi, Sergio Martino, Mario Caiano, Marcello Avallone, Alberto De Martino, Antonio Manetti, Marco Manetti, Cosimo Alemà – was preceded by the screening of I Tarantinianiby Steve Della Casa and Maurizio Tedesco.

The CSC-Cineteca Nazionale, with the Festival, will commemorate Anna Magnani on the fortieth anniversary of her death with the screening of And the Wild Wild Women (Nella città l’inferno) by Renato Castellani (Teatro Studio at 7:30 pm). For the retrospective “Hercules Conquers the Silver Screen” the screening will feature The Revenge of Spartacus (La vendetta di Spartacus) by Michele Lupo (Teatro Studio, 2:30 pm), whereas the retrospective “Claudio Gora Director and Actor” will screen Three Strangers in Rome )Tre straniere a Roma (Studio 3, 5:30 pm).