The Rome Film Festival 2022

All about the 17th edition of the Rome Film Fest

The 17th edition of Festa del Cinema, Rome’s annual famed film festival, kicks off on October 13 until October 23. The main event takes place at Auditorium Parco della Musica, adorned for the occasion with an infinite red carpet, but the Festa also spreads to other evocative locations in the capital, like MAXXI and Casa del Cinema.

The Film Festival will involve the whole city in 2022. Along with MAXXI and Casa del Cinema – which for years have been part of the official theatres of the event – also four halls of the Giulio Cesare Cinema will be active. Plus, among the “Sale in Festa” of the 17th edition there will be: the Palladium Theatre, Scena, the Nuovo Sacher Cinema, and other fifteen theatres all over the city. Furthermore, the festival will travel beyond the city, with a series of screenings organised in other municipalities of the Lazio region.

After the success of previous years, there will also be a collaboration between the Rome Libraries Network and the festival. In fact, it will be expanded and the Festa del Cinema will involve as many as fifteen libraries between Rome’s centre and suburbs. Finally, as an autonomous body, but which runs parallel to main event, throughout the whole time, there is Alice nella Città devoted to the younger audiences.

Thirty-two are the countries participating in this year’s edition, they include: Saudia Arabia, Austria, Chile, South Korea, Cuba, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Morocco, Mexico, the Netherlands, Palestine, Poland, the United Kingdom, Spain, the United States, South Africa, Turkey, Ukraine, Tunisia, Sweden, Switzerland, Latvia and Hungary. As per tradition, the festival brings a wide variety of choices to the public, including different genres and video forms, old classics and most recent successes as well as ‘close encounters’ with filmmakers.

Like last year, this October too, there will be a virtual room where you can follow part of the event on demand: the Digital RFF17platform.

Colibrì - Film Apertura Festa del Cinema di Roma 2022 — Il Colibrì by Francesca Archibugi

Opening film

The opening film of this year’s Rome Film Fest is Francesca Archibugi’s Il Colibrì. The film is an adaptation of the novel by the same name written by Sandro Veronese. It follows the life of Marco Carrera from childhood through adulthood to his final years — though not quite in that order. Led by Pierfrancesco Favino, Il Colibrì’s cast of expert actors — including Laura Morante, Bérénice Bejo and legendary director-actor Nanni Moretti — guide us through the strange, sometimes tragic, always fascinating labyrinth of Marco’s life, a man who becomes a hero by always offering shelter from life’s inexorable storms.

Official Selection

The films officially selected for this year’s Festa are more than 100, they are grouped into different sections: ‘The Progressive Cinema Competition’, an international competition which does not distinguish between fictional, documentary and animated films, ‘Freestyle’, non-competitive section entailing videoclips and videoart, ‘Grand Public’, ‘Special Projections’, ‘Best of 2022’, brining the best films from other international festivals, ‘History of Cinema’, devoted to restored versions of great classics, and ‘Retrospective’.

The Gran Public section, entails 17 screenings, opening with, as mentioned, Il Colibrì and continuing with other pictures, both from national and international directors, which genres range from thriller, to black comedy, to romantic comedy, to western, and more.

Titles include David O’Russel’s Amsterdam, starring Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington, narrating of three friends, a nurse, a doctor and a lawyer, witnessing a death that turns out to be a murder. Equally dark, in fact almost horror, but with comic undertones is The Menu, by Mark Mylod starring Ralph Fiennes in the role of a celebrity chef in the exclusive restaurant, offering a lavish molecular gastronomic menu with odd surprises. Dropping the dark, but keeping the comic is Bros, from director Nicholas Stoller, a romantic comedy taking shape in the context of the opening of a LGBTQ museum in New York. Changing the tone completely, there is, for instance, Butcher’s Crossings, starring Nicholas Cage, an Ivy League drop-out who travels to Colorado and joins a group of buffalo hunters on a journey that puts his life and sanity at risk in epic western fashion. And many, many more …

IL COLIBRÌ
Francesca Archibugi, Italy, France, 2022, 126′
Cast: Pierfrancesco Favino, Kasia Smutniak, Bérénice Bejo, Laura Morante, Sergio Albelli, Alessandro Tedeschi, Benedetta Porcaroli, Massimo Ceccherini, Fotiní Peluso, Francesco Centorame, Pietro Ragusa, Valeria Cavalli, Nanni Moretti

The film will be preceded by a screening of the short movie:
PAVAROTTI, LA STELLA
by Gianluigi Toccafondo, Italia, 2022

AMSTERDAM
by David O. Russell, United States, 2022, 134’
Cast: Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Alessandro Nivola, Andrea Riseborough, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Rock, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Shannon, Mike Myers, Taylor Swift, Zoe Saldaña, Rami Malek, Robert De Niro

ASTOLFO
by Gianni Di Gregorio, Italy, 2021, 97’
Cast: Gianni Di Gregorio, Stefania Sandrelli, Alfonso Santagata, Alberto Testone, Mauro Lamantia, Agnese Nano, Simone Colombari, Andrea Cosentino, Biagio Forestieri, Mariagrazia Pompei, Francesca Ventura, Gigio Morra

BROS
by Nicholas Stoller, United States, 2022, 115’
Cast: Billy Eichner, Luke Macfarlane, Guy Branum, Miss Lawrence, Ts, Dot-Marie Jones, Jim Rash, Eve Lindley, Monica Raymund, Guillermo Díaz, Jai Rodriguez, Amanda Bearse, Debra Messing, Bowen Yang, Harvey Fierstein

BUTCHER’S CROSSING
by Gabe Polsky, USA, 2022, 105’
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Fred Hechinger, Xander Berkeley, Rachel Keller, Jeremy Bobb, Paul Raci

EDUCAZIONE FISICA
by Stefano Cipiani, ITA, 2022, 88′
Cast: Angela Finocchiaro, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Raffaella Rea, Sergio Rubini, Claudio Santamaria

ERA ORA
by Alessandro Aronadio, Italy, 2022, 109’
Cast: Edoardo Leo, Barbara Ronchi, Mario Sgueglia, Francesca Cavallin, Raz Degan, Massimo Vertmüller, Stella Trotta, Sofia Piacentini, Nina Bianchini Zoni, Noa Bianchini Zoni, Andrea Purgatori

THE LOST KING
by Stephen Frears, UK, 2022, 108’
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Steve Coogan, Harry Lloyd, Mark Addy

THE MENU
by Mark Mylod, USA, 2022, 107’
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, Hong Chau, Janet McTeer, Judith Light, John Leguizamo

MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS
by Anthony Fabian, UK, Hungary, 2022, 115’
Cast: Lesley Manville, Isabelle Huppert, Lambert Wilson, Alba Baptista, Lucas Bravo, Ellen Thomas, Rose Williams, Jason Isaacs

L’OMBRA DI CARAVAGGIO
by Michele Placido, Italy, France, 2022, 120’
Cast: Riccardo Scamarcio, Louis Garrel, Isabelle Huppert, Micaela Ramazzotti, Tedua, Vinicio Marchioni, Lolita Chammah

IL PRINCIPE DI ROMA
by Edoardo Falcone, Italy, 2022, 92’
Cast: Marco Giallini, Giulia Bevilacqua, Filippo Timi, Sergio Rubini, Denise Tantucci, Antonio Bannò, Liliana Bottone, Massimo De Lorenzo, Andrea Sartoretti, Giuseppe Battiston

RAPINIAMO IL DUCE
by Renato De Maria, Italia, 2022, 98’
Cast: Pietro Castellitto, Matilda De Angelis, Tommaso Ragno, Isabella Ferrari, Alberto Astorri, Maccio Capatonda, Luigi Fedele, Coco Rebecca Edogamhe, Maurizio Lombardi, Lorenzo De Moor, Luca Lo Destro, Filippo Timi

RHEINGOLD
by Fatih Akın, Germania, Paesi Bassi, Morocco, Mexico, 2022, 140’
Cast: Emilio Sakraya, Kardo Razzazi, Mona Pirzad, Arman Kashani, Hüsein Top, Sogol Faghani

LA STRANEZZA
by Roberto Andò, Italy, 2022, 103’
Cast: Toni Servillo, Salvo Ficarra, Valentino Picone, Giulia Andò, Rosario Lisma, Aurora Quattrocchi, Donatella Finocchiaro, Galatea Ranzi, Fausto Russo Alesi, Filippo Luna, Tuccio Musumeci, Luigi Lo Cascio, Renato Carpentieri

WAR – LA GUERRA DESIDERATA
by Gianni Zanasi, Italia, Francia, 2022, 130’
Cast: Edoardo Leo, Miriam Leone, Giuseppe Battiston, Carlotta Natoli, Stefano Fresi, Antonella Attili, Massimo Popolizio

WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?
by Shekhar Kapur, Regno Unito, 2022, 109’
Cast: Lily James, Emma Thompson, Shazad Latif, Shabana Azmi, Sajal Aly, Oliver Chris, Asim Chaudhry, Jeff Mirza, Alice Orr-Ewing

Close Encounters

A part of the festival is dedicated to ‘Close Encounters’, where the audience has the opportunity to listen to insightful conversations between world-famous filmmakers and hear about the backstage of their cinematic debuts. This year’s Close Encounters will host Paolo Virzi’, Luc Besson, James Gray, Mario Martone and Stephen Friars.

Retrospective

The retrospective of the seventeenth edition of the Film Fest, curated by Mario Sesti, will be dominated by one of the most romantic celebrity couples of the history of modern American cinema: Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, with 15 movies exploring both their individual careers and the interlacement of love, cinema, acting and directing characterising their work. The two actors are also the protagonists of the official image of this edition, where they are portrayed in the intimacy of their New York flat by Louis Goldman in the early 1960s.

Awards

The films partaking in the Progressive Cinema Competition will be judged by a jury made up of professionals from the world of cinema, culture and the arts, who will assign the following awards: Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, the ‘Monica Vitti’ Award for Best Actress, and ‘Vittorio Gassman for Best Actor and a Special Award for best photography, soundtrack and editing. Two additional awards are the ‘Ugo Tognazzi’ Award for Best Comedy and the Best First Work BNL BNP Paribas Award.

This year’s lifetime achievement award goes to James Ivory, whose films A Cooler Climate, Maurice, Mr and Mrs Bridge, The Remains of the Day and Room with a View will be shown during the festival. Ivory directed 32 films overall, not counting his first short movies, he received four Oscar nominations for directing and won his first Academy Award at the age of 89 thanks to the screenplay of Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name.

Click here to find out the full festival program