Milan is gearing up for the launch of Italy's first documentary festival, an event which organisers hope will turn the northern city into a premier centre for factual film and television.
Some 250 works have been selected for the Milan Doc Festival, which opens on Wednesday and runs until the end of the month.
The Italian premiere of Brando, about screen legend Marlon Brando, has been picked as the festival's opening film.
Made for television by producer Leslie Grief and writer Mimi Freedman, Brando features interviews with a host of celebrities including Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino, Jane Fonda and Dennis Hopper, as well as never-before-seen footage of the iconic actor.
Other highlights include A Journey to Darfur, a documentary made by Hollywood star George Clooney and his veteran journalist father Nick.
The pair spent nine days in the war-torn region of western Sudan, filming in refugee camps in a bid to draw world attention to the conflict which has cost the lives of 200,000 people and led to the displacement of an estimated 2.5 million.
The festival will also spotlight the work of New York documentary maker Michael Blackwood, who has made and produced more than 100 films about prominent cultural figures including the artists Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon and Sol LeWitt, composer Philip Glass, dance choreographer George Balanchine and architects Frank Gehry and Peter Eisenman.
On the Italian side, the festival features Vittorio Nevano's film Il Luogo, La Memoria (The Place, The Memory), in which writer and director Andrea Camilleri looks back at his youth in the Sicilian city of Enna, as well as tributes to directing greats Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni.
The festival's artistic director, Rubino Rubini, said that "we will be screening 250 small masterpieces which it is impossible to see anywhere else".
Director General Carlo Fuscagni stressed to reporters that Italy lacked a documentary fest and that the Milan Doc Festival aimed to fill the gap and grow into a major international event.
"We want to turn Milan into the European capital of documentaries," Fuscagni said.
