The sixth edition of the International Rome Film Festival opens on Thursday (27th of October – 4th of November 2011). The Sala Santa Cecilia in the Auditorium Parco della Musica will host the first Out of Competition film of the Official Selection, The Lady by Luc Besson: at 7.00 pm, the French director and actors Michelle Yeoh and David Thewlis will be walking the Festival’s red carpet at 7.00 pm, before the 7.30 pm screening of the film.  Besson’s film is about the life of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Myanmar activists and Nobel Peace prize winner.

Fifteen films in competition for the Official Selection of the sixth edition of the International Rome Film Festival (27th October – 4th November) featuring productions from all over the world.  Among many others, the scheduled films include Hotel Lux by Leander Haußmann, Babycall by Pål Sletaune, Hysteria by Tanya Wexler, Poongsan by Juhn Jaihong, The Eye of the Storm by Fred Schepisi with Geoffrey Rush and Charlotte Rampling, Une vie meilleure by Cédric Kahn with Guillaume Canet, Magic Valley by Jaffe Zinn, Un Cuento Chino by Sebastián Borensztein and La Femme du cinquième by Pawel Pawlikowski with Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott Thomas.

There are four Italian films in competition: La kryptonite nell borsa by Ivan Cotroneo, with Valeria Golino, Cristiana Capotondi and Luca Zingaretti, Il cuore grande delle ragazze by Pupi Avati with Cesare Cremonini and Micaela Ramazzotti, Il mio domani by Marina Spada with Claudia Gerini, Il paese delle spose infelici by Pippo Mezzapesa.

The Lady by Luc Besson with Michelle Yeoh and Daniel Thewlis, a film out of competition in the Official Selection, will open the Festival. While the digitally restored 4K version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the film’s public screening, will be the final event of the Festival.

The Official Selection out of competition films include Mon pire cauchemar by Anne Fontaine with Isabelle Huppert, A Few Best Man, by Stephan Elliott, with Olivia Newton-John, Too Big to Fail, the TV film directed by Oscar® Prize winner Curtis Hanson, produced by HBO with an exceptional cast: William Hurt, Paul Giamatti, Bill Pullman, Cynthia Nixon, James Woods and Topher Grace. A mention must also go to the films by Italian directors Someday This Pain will be Useful to You by Roberto Faenza and L’industriale by Giuliano Montaldo with Pierfrancesco Favino and Carolina Crescentini.

The films in competition in the Official Selection will be judged by an international jury. The Oscar® prize winner Ennio Morricone will be the Jury President assisted by director Susanne Bier, the étoile Roberto Bolle, the English actress, director and author Carmen Chaplin, the producer David Putnam, the actress Debra Winger. The jury members will award the Marc’Aurelio Prize for the Best Film, the Marc’Aurelio Grand Jury Prize, the Marc’Aurelio Jury Prize for Best actress and Best actor.

The Festival also expects all spectators to take part in awarding the BNL Audience Prize for Best film. Furthermore, thanks to the collaboration with the Department of Youth of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the Marc’Aurelio Debut Prize will be awarded to the director of the best first film included in any of the Festival sections.

The Special Events program, shared by all the various sections, once again relates to projects that are not entirely focused on being screened but instead involve performances, a mingling of different genres and must consequently not be pinned down to strict preview regulations. Wim Wenders for example will meet audiences to introduce his acclaimed Pina (based on choreographer Pina Bausch), and Totò 3D, by Mario Mattioli, released in 1953.

The Extra section includes 12 documentaries which will compete for the Marc’Aurelio Prize for best documentary assigned by a special jury headed by director Francesca Comencini, 7 documentaries and 5 out of competition feature filmS. Among the most long-awaited events in this section there is the Cinema Lesson to be held by Michael Mann, following in the footsteps of the many celebrated directors and actors who over the course of the years have taken part in the Extra section (the Coen brothers, Terrence Malick, Francis Ford Coppola and John Landis, Al Pacino and Meryl Streep) along with the Duets which this year will feature Sergio Castellitto and Penelope Cruz, Valeria Solarino and Vinicio Marchioni, Sergio Rubini and Riccardo Scarmarcio. Furthermore, the section program also offers a space dedicated to Videoart, organized in collaboration with the MAXXI Museum and the CortoArteCircuito association, while the Casa del Cinema will host Off Doc, a showcase which will take a look at the documentary in its various guises (enquiry, essay, reportage, anecdote, docufiction, mockumentary).

Alice nella città, the Festival sector for the young has 14 competing films including Little Glory by Vincent Lannoo with Cameron Bright, a young Canadian actor previously seen in the Twilight saga,the wheelchair road movie Hasta la vista by Geoffrey Enthoven and Kokurikozaka kara, the second film by Goro Miyazaki, produced by the Studio Ghibli with a screenplay by Hayao Miyaizaki. Out of competition The Lion King in 3D, the film that has contributed to the rebirth of the Walt Disney Studios cartoons and stands among the largest box office hits of all times for cartoon films.

In the wake of the success of the previous years, the Official Selection and Alice nella città will also organize an event involving books and film, to mark the release of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part I. In the context of the collaboration between the two sections, the Festival will also be screening The Adventures of Tintin a 3D film in which Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson work side by side, the first as director and the second as producer, and the first sequences of his new film chosen by director Martin Scorsese , Hugo Cabret, and discussed by two exceptional guests: the young lead, Asa Butterfield, and the writer best loved by American youth, Brian Selznick. Finally La guerre des boutons, by Christophe Barratier.

The Focus section this year trains its eye on Britain. Directors Terence Davies, David Hare and Michael Winterbottom are three of the directors of the seven films screened in the showcase. The retrospective “Punks & Patriots” has been selected by seven British artists including Tilda Swinton, Michael Nyman and Hanif Kureishi. A world famous video installation artist, Douglas Gordon will feature his exhibition “Raise the dead”. The red carpet on this occasion is the creation of artist Simon J. Lycett, who has collaborated with the British Royal Family for many years.

The sixth edition of the Festival will award the Marc’Aurelio Actor’s Prize to Richard Gere, the Hollywood star who has fought so many humanitarian battles and has played the lead in many popular films such as  American Gigolo, An Officer and a Gentleman, Pretty Woman as well as performing for great film directors including Robert Altman, Akira Kurosawa, Sidney Lumet, Francis Ford Coppola, Todd Haynes and Terrence Malick. Richard Gere will introduce the screening of Days of Heaven, Terrence Malick’s wonderful second film which provided Gere with his first lead role. This event was made possible thanks to the collaboration with Universal Pictures Italia Home Entertainment who granted permission for the Paramount Picture release to be screened.

For more info: http://www.romacinemafest.it