Sophia Loren, Cate Blanchett, Keira Knightley, Halle Berry, Monica Bellucci, Sharon Stone, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise and Sean Penn are among the stars who will light up this year's second edition of the Rome Cinema Festival, organisers said Thursday.
Blanchett will be the first to hit the red carpet on October 19 in a reprise of her acclaimed 1998 Elizabeth I portrayal in visionary Indian director Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth: The Golden Age.
Loren will bring the curtain down on October 27 as she receives a career achievement award.
In between, an array of would-be blockbusters and more arty fare from 40 countries will bid to draw at least as many viewers as the half million spectators the inaugural edition attracted.
Rome's film-buff mayor Walter Veltroni, who achieved his dream of bringing a major movie event to the Italian capital despite sneers from the cinema establishment and controversy over a clash with the Venice fest, said Thursday:
"This year is going to be even better".
Shrugging off the nay-sayers who thought the fest might be postponed or even scratched, Veltroni added: "They're always slamming novelty in this country. It's one of the national vices".
Redford's Lions for Lambs, a US-Afghanistan political drama he directed and stars in alongside Cruise and Meryl Streep, is one of the most keenly awaited films.
It is one of two US offerings out of competition, along with 83-year-old Sidney Lumet's Before The Devil Knows You're Dead starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke and Albert Finney.
Film buffs are also dying to see Francis Ford Coppola's first film in ten years, Youth Without Youth, which he described as a "highly personal philosophical noir" set in prewar Europe and based on a novella by Romanian writer Mircia Eliade.
Other treats for the auteur crowd are sure to be Martin Scorsese's homage to Sergio Leone, Danish cult director Susanne Bier's first English-language film, Things We Lost In The Fire, with the steamy pairing of Berry and Benicio Del Toro, and French veteran Alain Corneau's Le Deuxieme Souffle with Daniel Auteuil and Bellucci.
Corneau's film is one of 14 competing for the top Marcus Aurelius prize, including Hector Babenco's El Pasado with Gael Garcia Bernal, Jason Reitman's Juno with Ellen Page, Reservation Road by Hotel Rwanda director Terry George and starring Joaquin Phoenix and Jennifer Connelly, and Mongol, a tale of the youth of Genghis Khan by Russian director Sergei Bodrov of Prisoner of the Caucasus fame.
Also in contention are two Spanish films, Barcelona, Una Mapa and Caotica Ana; Fugitive Pieces from Canada; France's Ce Que Mes Yeux Ont Vu; China's Li Chun; and an Iranian-Japanese production, Hafez.
The two Italian contenders are Carlo Mazzacurati's la Giusta Distanza and Emidio Greco's L'Uomo Privato.
Among the fest's special events are a focus on India with new films such as Anurag Kashyap's No Smoking and a look at new socially and environmentally conscious movies from Hollywood such as Penn's Into The Wild, Tim Robbins' Noise and Gavin Hood's Rendition with Reese Witherspoon, Streep and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Knightley, fresh from her acclaimed role in the Ian McEwan adaptation Atonement, appears in another literary adaptation, Silk, from the international bestseller by Italian novelist Alessandro Baricco.
Sharon Stone is not appearing on film but in the flesh, as the charity auctioneer at a top fashion house's gala ball, modelled on a similar event at Cannes.
Cannes Director Gilles Jacob will be sending a personal message wishing the festival even more success, accompanied by his homage to Italian screen icon Anna Magnani, Lupa Romana.
