Viggo Mortensen, courtesy of HanWay Films

Source: HanWay Films

Viggo Mortensen

The Rome Film Festival has revealed its meetings programme for its 2024 edition, which will include masterclasses with actor and director Viggo Mortensen, writer Dennis Lehane and actress Chiara Mastroianni.

Mortensen is in Rome to present his second film as a director, The Dead Don’t Hurt, and will talk about the experience of making it and also about his career.

Lehane has written many novels adapted for the screen, among them Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River, Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, and Ben Affleck’s Gone, Baby, Gone and Live by Night.

Chiara Mastroianni is a guest of the festival for the centenary of the birth of her father, Marcello Mastroianni. She made her debut in Claude Lelouch’s The Two of Us alongside her mother, Catherine Deneuve. She won the best actress prize at Cannes for The Hotel of Lost Loves by Christophe Honoré, and also starred in 2024’s Marcello Mio which premiered at Cannes.

Elsewhere, the Paso Doble section of the Festival is dedicated to a dialogue between two authors.

The first Paso Doble event features Mexican stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, who broke out with Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También, and went on to found the production and distribution companies Canana Films and La Corriente del Golfo. They star in series La Máquina which will be presented in Rome’s Freestyle section.

The second Paso Doble will take place to mark the screening of Jonathan Demme’s Talking Heads’ concert film Stop Making Sense - 40th Anniversary. The festival will host the new 4K edition of the film: talking about it will be American Zoetrope’s James Mockoski, who oversaw the restoration, and Jerry Harrison, guitarist for Talking Heads, curator of the remastering of the soundtrack.

The Paso Doble programme will close with Fabio and Damiano D’Innocenzo, whose credits include La terra dell’Abbastanza, Favolacce, and America Latina, and the TV series Dostoevsky, which premiered at the Berlinale this year.

Elsewhere, the Absolute Beginners section, where a writer / director recounts the story of their cinema debut, will focus on Saverio Costanzo, whose credits include Finally Dawn and My Brilliant Friend. He will talk about his debut film Privatem, about a Palestinian family forced to share its home with Israeli soldiers who have taken up residence on the second floor. Private won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival in 2004.

The 19th edition of the Rome Film Festival takes place from 16 to 27 October.