Rome Film Fest Announces Full Competition Jury, Adds 2 New Out-of-Competition Films

ROME – Organizers of the international Rome Film Festival on Wednesday filled out the festival’s seven-person international jury to be headed by director and screenwriter Jeff Nichols, and added two new out-of-competition titles to the lineup.

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The main jury will hand out the festival’s most prestigious awards, including the Marcus Aurelius honors for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and four others.

Joining Nichols on the jury will be Russian-Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov; Roman actress Valentina Cervi; Edgardo Cozarinsky, an Argentinean writer and director of Ukrainian origin; Australian director P.J. Hogan; film critic and Edinburgh International Film Festival director Chris Fujiwara; and Iranian actress Leila Hatami, the daughter of famed director Ali Hatami.

The two late additions to the lineup are Francesco Castellani’s Black Star, the story of a soccer team made up of political refugees, and Tom Le Cancre from French director Manuel Pradal. Festival organizers characterized Tom Le Cancre as a reinterpretation of the Mark Twain’s iconic Huckleberry Finn tale with a little Peter Pan thrown in. Both films will screen on Nov. 17, the final day of the festival.

With the announcement of the full international jury, the only official information lacking to round out the festival’s program is the identity of the final two competition films. Rome artistic director Marco Mueller told The Hollywood Reporter that the titles are being withheld until the last minute in order to avoid problems from national censors in the home countries of the productions.

The seventh edition of the Rome festival gets underway Nov. 9.