Tom Hanks Tribeca Getty H 2016
Getty ImagesThe Rome Film Fest continues its return to high-profile celebrity guests in its 2016 edition. The festival, under the direction of Antonio Monda, will this year pay tribute to Tom Hanks with a lifetime achievement award.
The two-time Academy Award-winning actor will join in a public conversation with Monda about his body of work, and the festival will host a 15-film retrospective of his top hits. The actor has delivered three decades of blockbusters, including Saving Private Ryan, Apollo 13, The Da Vinci Code and Bridge of Spies, and he won the best actor Oscar for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump.
“I consider Tom Hanks to be one of the greatest actors of all time,” Monda said Tuesday in a statement, adding “for the versatility that he commands extending from drama to comedy, for the psychological finesse with which he immortalizes characters who will remain forever in our imagination. His extraordinary talent and profound humanity make him a classic but always contemporary actor: his films and his performances will never be dated.”
Also announced among early confirmations for the festival, three-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep will discuss great Italian actresses who have influenced her career, most notably Silvana Mangano.
Other guests to join in public conversations with Monda include Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and director David Mamet; post-modern American writer Don DeLillo, who will discuss his passion for Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni; and architect Daniel Libeskind, who will delve into his love for the work of Paolo Sorrentino.
In addition to the Hanks retrospective, two other retrospectives will round out the event: one dedicated to Italian director Valerio Zurlini and one on the theme of American politics, with films from John Ford, Frank Capra and Steven Spielberg.
Special tributes also will be held for The Adventures of Pinocchio director Luigi Comencini on the 100th anniversary of his birth; director Gillo Pontecorvo, best known for The Battle of Algiers, on the tenth anniversary of his death; and the Mario Monicelli film For Love and Gold, to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary.
The eleventh edition of the Rome Film Fest is set to run Oct. 13-23.
