(By Michelle Ruelle).
On Thursday, the Eternal City
will raise curtains on the ninth Rome International Film
Festival, based at Rome's Auditorium concert hall and featuring
a line-up of 51 titles screening over the festival's 10-day run.
The event is attracting a number of international cinema
big names, including American star Kevin Costner, British actor
Clive Owen and German director Wim Wenders.
Unique to this year's event is the audience-based jury, in
which audience members will vote following screenings to
determine winners in each of the festival's four main
categories.
The festival's Gala category highlights the most important
films of the year, and this year's line-up includes the European
premieres of British director Stephen Daldry's Trash, Black and
White directed by Mike Binder, Still Alice directed by Richard
Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, and the Italian premiere of Gone
Girl by David Fincher.
In Trash, set in Brazil and based on the eponymous 2010
book by Andy Mulligan, three kids discover a wallet in Rio's
slums, which throws them into a mystery that has them running
from police.
Black and White is a drama that has brought early Oscar
buzz for Costner and co-star Octavia Spencer, and is based on a
true story of a custody battle over a mixed-race child.
Costner will give a talk as part of the film festival's
Conversations series of presentations with actors and directors.
Director Brad Anderson is also in the Conversations series,
teaching a masterclass and presenting his film Stonehearst
Asylum in its European debut, in the festival's category for
world, international, or European debuts, called Mondo Genere.
Anderson's film is a thriller based on an Edgar Allan Poe
short story, slated for US release on October 24 and starring
Ben Kingsley, Kate Beckinsale and Michael Caine.
In Time Out of Mind, which had its international premiere
at the Toronto Film Festival and will make its European debut in
Rome in the Cinema d'Oggi category, a homeless man played by
Richard Gere searches to reconcile with his estranged daughter,
played by Jena Malone.
Owen will be on-hand for a talk and a screening of director
Steven Soderbergh's television drama, The Knick, in which the
Coventry native plays a turn-of-the-century surgeon in a New
York hospital.
Wenders will also hold a talk in the Conversations series
and present his documentary, The Salt of the Earth, which won
the Special Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
The festival, which is still finding its footing in the
same country as the iconic Venice Film Festival, continues to
emphasize itself as a marketplace for international
distributors, buyers and producers.
Since its 2006 inception, the festival has hosted and
sponsored a networking forum in venues running along Via Veneto
known as The Business Street, where cinema dealmakers can meet
and talk business.
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