Jude Law, Bill Murray, Adrien Brody Among Actors Announced for Rome Film Fest

ROME – The International Rome Film Festival’s star wattage got a boost Friday when the festival announced that Jude Law, Bill Murray, and Oscar winner Adrien Brody will appear at the seventh edition of the festival, which gets underway next week.

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The event has been criticized locally for its relative lack of star power, but the final list of invitees should turn a few heads: Law, Murray, and Brody will join previously announced Sylvester Stallone, James Franco, and Matthew Modine on the red carpet.

Among the international stars expected at the festival are the U.K.’s Charlote Rampling, Anna Mouglalis of France, Xu Fan and Feng Xiaogang of China, India’s Rii Sen, and home grown Italian talents including Alessandro Gassman, Michele Placido and Oscar winner Giuseppe Tornatore.

The festival, under the artistic direction of Marco Mueller for the first time this year, also announced that all of the directors of the films screening in competition will attend. The last two of those directors – the films withheld because of censorship problems in their home countries -- will be announced next week.

Mueller earned headlines two weeks ago when he said the festival would feature fewer stars because he refused to pay appearance fees to bring them to town. Piera Detassis, Mueller's predecessor as artistic director in Rome, told local papers that she too refused to pay the fees.

The festival will open next Friday with the out-of-competition screening of Bakhtiar Khudojnazarov’s epic V Ožidanii Morja (Waiting for the Sea). It concludes Nov. 17.