American filmmaker Woody Allen has been spotted scouting locations in Rome for the last few weeks, but yesterday he was officially welcomed to the city by Mayor Gianni Alemanno.
Alemanno met Allen to present the director with a statue of Rome’s Capitoline Wolf as a token of the city’s appreciation.
Allen is scheduled to begin filming on the 11th of July in the Eternal City, leading a star-studded cast that includes Roberto Benigni, Penelope Cruz, Ellen Page, Jesse Eisenberg and Alec Baldwin.
This will be Allen’s first movie filmed in Italy since 1996’s Everyone Says I Love You and the first time the director has appeared on screen since Scoop in 2006.
Allen explained: "There just happened to be a part that I could play. I can't play the love interest anymore, which is tremendously frustrating".
The film will, however, revolve around a love story with Allen playing a father coming to meet his daughter’s Italian fiancé.
