The Rome Film Fest, which is currently underway, is taking movies to screens all over the Eternal City, including jails, housing projects and a suburban park with two enormous ancient aqueducts.
While the event’s 18th edition – the core component of which runs Oct. 18-29 – is drawing record-breaking crowds at the Renzo Piano-designedauditorium, screenings are also taking place in various other venues, including a program of fresh movies and talks being held in local penitentiaries.
On Wednesday, Rome’s opener “There’s Still Tomorrow,” a feminist dramedy that marks the directorial debut of popular Italian actor Paola Cortellesi (pictured, above) is playing in the women’s ward of Rome’s maximum security Rebibbia jail with screenwriters Giulia Calenda and Furio Andreotti in tow to introduce the screening. On Thursday, a first work titled “Troppo Azzurro,”about a 25-year-old named Dario who still lives with his parents and frets about his first date, will be presented by the director to inmates of the city’s Casal Del Marmo juvenile detention center.
“When the mayor of Rome asked me to take the reins, I told him that what I could bring to the table is my experience as organiser of metropolitan events,” said Gian Luca Farinelli, president of the Cinema Per Roma foundation that oversees the Rome fest. He also heads the Bologna film archives.
Farinelli and Rome fest artistic director Paola Malanga are reshaping the Rome Fest into a wide-ranging year-round affair that kicked off in June with Martin Scorsese introducing a screening of “Goodfellas” at Rome’s Casa del Cinema. Since then, they’ve held some 270 movie screenings all over the city drawing more than 63,000 admissions (most of which for free-of-charge events).
Over the summer, Cinema per Roma set up several movie arenas in the south of Rome, one in the Tor Bella Monaca housing complex and another in the Corviale housing project, which are both known for being crime ridden. The top draw in these venues was “The Blues Brothers.” They also held screenings in Santa Maria della Pietà, on the site of a former psychiatric hospital and in the Parco degli Acquedotti park that is part of the Appian Way and named afterthe impressive Roman aqueducts that still stand there. That 1,200-seat outdoor venue was fully packed every nightfor titles such as Federico Fellini’s “Roma,” which served as the screening series closer.
“This boom in attendance took place within a summer that really marked a turning point in terms of Italians going back to the movies after the pandemic, and I think we helped fuel that in Rome,” says Farinelli.
Meanwhile, roughly at its midway point, the 18th edition of the Rome Film Fest is racking up impressive admissions with more than 55,000 tickets sold on the sixth day of its run, roughly 19,000 more than the same period last year. Rome Fest revenue is also up, by 34%, according to a statement.
Gael Garcia Bernal is presiding over the jury of the rebooted fest’s main section, which is now known as Progressive Cinema and has plenty of politically engaged titles. 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’s “Achilles,” 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 centers on a French woman of North African descent who seeks justice after her younger brother dies suspiciously after being stopped by the police.
