The first films in Competition at the 8 Rome Film Festival: Dallas Buyers Club by Jean-Marc Vallée, Manto Acuìfero by Michael Rowe, Ben o Değilim by Tayfun Pirselimoğlu

On the red carpet Jared Leto and “Thirty Seconds to Mars”

The Festival commemorates Federico Fellini

and Giuliano Gemma

The Rome Film Festival finally gets underway: tomorrow, Saturday November 9^th, the first films in Competition will be screened. At 7:30 pm, the Sala Santa Cecilia will host the screening of Dallas Buyers Club, the latest film by Canadian director and screenwriter Jean-Marc Vallée, the author of C.R.A.Z.Y., The Young Victoria (winner of an Oscar® for Best Costumes) and Café de Flore. Before the film, the Festival and Vanity Fair will award the film the “Vanity Fair International Award for Cinematic Excellence”: the director of Vanity Fair Luca Dini will confer the acknowledgment – a recognition of project excellence – to actor Jared Leto, the star of the film along with Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner. Jared Leto will appear on the red carpet of the Auditorium at 7:00 pm with “Thirty Seconds to Mars”, the band that has sold over ten million albums around the world, and sold out every concert on its current European tour.

The first film in Competition will be screened at 5:00 pm, in the Sala Sinopoli: Manto Acuífero by Michael Rowe, one of the avant-garde artists of contemporary Mexican cinema, and the author of Año bisiesto, winner of the Camera D’Or at Cannes in 2010. Manto Acuífero is the second film of the “Trilogy of Solitude” (which began with Año bisiesto) and is the story of the difficulties faced by Caro, an eight-year old girl contending with her parents’ divorce. At 10:00 pm in the Sala Sinopoli, the third film in Competition for the day is Ben o Değilim (I Am Not Him) by Tayfun Pirselimoğlu, director, painter, author and screenwriter who addresses the theme of identity by bringing to the screen a morbid relationship between the introverted Nihat, who works in a hospital cafeteria, and Ayşe, a mysterious woman hired as a dishwasher.

In the morning, starting at 9:30 am at the Teatro Studio, the Minister of the Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism Massimo Bray, will be at the “National Cinema Conference”, called by the Minister himself to promote a discussion on the prospects of the audiovisual and film industry and to define a series of strategic directions that can strengthen the quantity and quality of the industry.

At 4:00 pm in Sala Petrassi, the Festival will again present one of the most highly anticipated events for film lovers, the on-stage conversations between actors, directors and the public. The opening conversation of the series will feature English actor John Hurt, the extraordinary English performer whose career has stretched across four decades of cinema at the service of directors such as Alan Parker, Ridley Scott, David Lynch, Michael Cimino, Sam Peckinpah, Gus Van Sant, Robert Zemeckis.

Also at 4:00 pm, the Festival will dedicate a special moment to children and their families. For the screening of Belle et Sébastien by Nicolas Vanier (the film will be screened Out of Competition in collaboration with Alice nella Città, at 4:30 pm in Sala Santa Cecilia), the red carpet will turn white: snowflakes will greet the arrival of Belle, a Pyrenean shepherd who will walk the red carpet at the side of the director.

To commemorate one of the most admired Italian actors in recent decades, Giuliano Gemma, the Festival will hold a screening at 2:30 pm, at the Teatro Studio, of My Son, the Hero (Arrivano I Titani) by Duccio Tessari and at 5:00 pm the documentary Giuliano Gemma. Un italiano nel mondo, realized by his daughter Vera Gemma. The same day, at 8:00 pm in Sala Petrassi, there will be a commemoration of Federico Fellini twenty years after his death: the CSC-Cineteca Nazionale will present the digital restoration of The Temptation of Dr. Antonio (Le tentazioni del dottor Antonio), the famous episode from the anthology film Boccaccio ’70, preceded by the short film by Antonello Sarno Federico degli spiriti.

Out of Competition, at 7:00 pm in the Sala Sinopoli, there will be the screening of La luna di Torino by Davide Ferrario, which portrays the current economic crisis through the eyes of three roommates, while at 10:30 pm Sala Santa Cecilia will feature the witches from Witching and Bitching (La Brujas de Zugarramurdi), the new film by Alex de la Iglesia, one of the protagonists of contemporary genre cinema. The Spanish director will meet the public Sunday November 10^th at 5:30 pm at Teatro Studio.

The programme of CinemaXXI will present, at 10:30 pm at the Sala Petrassi, the screening of Little Feet by Alexandre Rockwell, one of the most interesting filmmakers on the American independent film scene, and the short film Lü by the famous Chinese director Yonfan. At 5:00 pm at the MAXXI – the National Museum of XXI Century Arts, there will be a screening for the public of Glaucocamaleo by Luca Trevisani and of the short film Thing by Anouk De Clercq, whereas at 8:00 pm two short films, Riverbero by the collective MyBossWas and Chi ha lottato con l’angelo resta fosforescente by Riccardo Giacconi, will precede the screening of the documentary I Made a Whole Load of Money (Ho fatto una barca di soldi) by Dario Acocella, a day-long journey with seventy-year-old artist Fausto Delle Chiaie, a pioneer of Street Art and founder of the Infractionist Manifesto (Prospettive Doc Italia, in competition). In the same programme section, at 5:30 pm in Sala Petrassi, the public may attend the screening of Letter to the President (Lettera al Presidente) by Marco Santarelli, an intimate odyssey through the stories of men and women who, from the post-war period through 1969, turned to the highest Authority of the Country, the President of the Republic, in the hopes of solving a problem or making a dream come true.

The retrospective “Hercules conquers the Silver Screen”, dedicated to the cinematic universe of the peplum, will present the screenings of Hercules (Le fatiche di Ercole) by Pietro Francisci (at 11:30 am, Studio 3) and Hercules in the Haunted World (Ercole al centro della Terra) by Mario Bava (at 10:30 pm, MAXXI); for the retrospective “Claudio Gora, director and actor”, La contessa azzurra (at 2:30 pm, MAXXI).