Organisers of Rome's first ever film festival unveiled on Tuesday the 16 movies that will be vying for the event's top award.
The line-up highlighted the October fest's international flavour with the inclusion of several Asian features together with pictures from Argentina, Iran, Turkey, Russia, Georgia and Belgium.
Three Italian films were selected: Francesca Comencini's money-themed A Casa Nostra (Our Home), Alessandro Angelini's father-son drama L'Aria Salata' (Salt Air), and La Strada di Levi (Primo Levi's Journey), a documentary by Davide Ferrario retracing the journey taken by Italian writer Levi after his release from a Nazi death camp.
Gardens in Autumn by veteran Georgian Otar Iosseliani is in the race, together with The Legacy, a follow-up to the award-winning gritty thriller Tzameti (13) by young fellow Georgian Gela Babluani, and Izobrazhaya Zhertvu (Playing the Victim), a dark comedy by Russian director Kirill
Serebrennikov.
Turkey's Reha Erdem is competing with Bes Vakit (Times And Winds), a film about three children growing up in a small Turkish village, while British director Shane Meadows is present with This Is England, a drama about English skinheads set in the 1980s.
The Asian crop includes Chinese filmmaker Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Go Master; Hong Kong director Patrick Tam's After This Our Exile; and Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto's Nightmare Detective.
The winning film in the October 13-21 festival will be chosen by a jury of 50 ordinary cinema goers who have been picked from hundreds of applicants. The top award will be the Marco Aurelio, a prize designed by Italian jewellers Bulgari based on Rome's famed equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius.
But the competition almost risks taking a back seat tothe numerous film premieres, screenings, exhibitions, book presentations and other events that have been planned to fill out the festival.
Nicole Kidman has been signed up to open the event with the world premiere of her film Fur based on the life of photographer Diane Arbus and directed by Steven Shainberg. Another screen beauty, Italy's Monica Bellucci, will be present for the premiere of N: Napoleon and Me, by Paolo
Virzi, which is set on the island of Elba during Napoleon's exile.
Other major premieres include Martin Scorsese's The Departed, a remake of a Hong Kong crime thriller with Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon; the noirish La Sconosciuta (The Stranger) by Italian Oscar-winner Giuseppe Tornatore; and The Namesake, a tale of immigration by internationally feted Indian director Mira Nair.
Meanwhile, Sean Connery will receive the festival's first career achievement award and Harrison Ford and Harvey Keitel will add to the star appeal.
With so many big names and such important films, Venice has been justifiably jittery about the festival launch, concerned that it could eventually be overshadowed or even sunk by it.
Venice, whose 74-year-old festival is the oldest in the world, has already complained about the timing of the Rome fest, which begins little more than a month after the end of the lagoon city's.
Scheduled the way they are now, observers say, the two festivals are bound to vie for stars and premieres. But Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni stressed on Tuesday that Venice and Rome should "join hands" in boosting Italian cinema.
"Thanks to Venice and Rome, Italy has been talking about film for the past two months. Cinema and culture in general are in the Italian DNA so we should join together in mutual love and respect in a bid to promote our cinema," Veltroni said.
