FESTIVAL
Gael Garcia Bernal is set to preside over the jury of the upcoming Rome Film Festival.
The Mexican actor, director and producer will be judging entries and bestowing prizes in the rebooted fest’s main section, which is now known as Progressive Cinema. Films competing for Rome prizes include Spanish director Isabel Coixet’s “Un Amor,” about a young woman socially and sexually exploited by a rural patriarchy; Iranian director Farhad Delaram, in which a former filmmaker turned medic decides to help a female political prisoner escape from a psych ward; and French director Mehdi Fikri’s “After The Fire,” which turns on a French woman of North African descent who seeks justice after her younger brother dies suspiciously after being stopped by the police.
The Eternal City event’s upcoming 18th edition – which will run Oct. 18-29 – will be the second since the appointment of RAI Cinema executive Paola Malanga as the fest’s artistic director and Gian Luca Farinelli, who heads the Bologna film archives, as president. They have reshaped the Rome fest – which over the years has had it’s ups and downs – as a competitive event that has at its core a mix of mostly auteur titles, many with political themes, plus a panoply of more crowd pleasing films of different types screening out-of-competition.
AWARD
Ed Sheeran has become the first British artist to receive a Brit Billion Award from the BPI, the voice of the U.K.’s leading record labels and companies, for surpassing 10 billion streams in the U.K. Over 1 billion of those streams were in the last year alone.
“It’s wonderful to receive the first-ever BRIT Billion Award in the U.K. for 10 billion streams,” Sheeran said in a statement. “I want to say a big thank you to my fans. None of this is possible without you guys.”
Added Jo Twist, BPI chief executive: “We congratulate Ed Sheeran and his team on this landmark achievement. Ed may represent the pinnacle of streaming success, but he is also among the thousands of artists who are being streamed in the tens and hundreds of millions in the U.K. each year and who are thriving thanks to streaming and label support. We look forward to honouring many more artists, including future talent, with a BRIT Billion award.”
