Rome Film Festival selects International Competition jury

Marco Müller, artistic director of the 8th Rome Film Festival (Nov 8-17), has announced the jury members who will complete the Competition Jury.

Jury president James Gray will be joined by:

• Verónica Chen (Argentina);
• Luca Guadagnino (Italy);
• Aleksei Guskov (Russia);
• Noémie Lvovsky (France);
• Amir Naderi (Iran);
• Zhang Yuan (China).

(See below for more details on the jury)

The Jury will confer the feature films in Competition the:

• Golden Marc’Aurelio Award for Best Film
• Best Director Award
• Special Jury Prize
• Best Actor Award
• Best Actress Award
• Award for Emerging Actor or Actress
• Award for Best Technical Contribution
• Award for Best Screenplay.

It was also announced today that Italian actress Anna Foglietta will host the awards ceremony on Nov 16.

The actress, whose credits include Anton Corbijn’s 2010 thriller The American, starring Geroge Clooney, will continue to do the honours through the second part of the evening, when the Maverick Director Award will be conferred to Hong Kong filmmaker Tsui Hark.

The awards ceremony will be followed by the screening of Tsui Hark’s latest film, Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon 3D (Di Renjie Zhi Shendu Longwang 3D).

International Competition jury

President

JAMES GRAY

Director, screenwriter and producer James Gray was born in New York in 1969. He made his debut as a director at the age of 25: his first film, Little Odessa, (1994), won several awards including the Silver Lion and the Coppa Volpi for Best Supporting Actress (Vanessa Redgrave) at the 51st Venice International Film Festival. His later films were presented in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival: The Yards (2000), a story of corruption and illegal trafficking set in New York, We Own the Night (2007), about the story of two brothers who reconciled to revenge the death of their father. In Two Lovers (2008), inspired by Dostoevsky’s short story “White Nights”, Gray turns to a different genre to make a love story. In 2013 The Immigrant, in Competition at Cannes, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Marion Cotillard and Jeremy Renner, addresses the struggle of two sisters who leave from Poland in search of fortune in America in the early ‘20s.

VERÓNICA CHEN

Born in Buenos Aires in 1969, after her studies in Classical Literature she graduated as a director from the Centro de Experimentacion y Réalización Cinematográfica. After working as an editor for director Daniel Burman, in 2001 she directed her first feature-length film, Smokers Only (Vagon fumador), presented at the Venice International Film Festival in the International Critics’ Week section, and winner of the Carabela de Plata for Best Debut Film at the Festival of Latin American Film in Huelva (Spain). Her second film, Water (Agua, 2006), the story of a former swimming champion seeking redemption after being unjustly accused of doping, won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Locarno Film Festival. In 2010, she participated in the International Independent Film Festival of Buenos Aires with Viaje sentimental. Her most recent film is the thriller Rabbit Woman (Mujer conejo, 2013).

LUCA GUADAGNINO

A director, screenwriter and producer, Luca Guadagnino was born in Palermo in 1971 and grew up in Ethiopia. He made his directorial debut with the film The Protagonists, which premiered at the 65th Venice Film Festival. Four more features followed: Mundo Civilizado, Cuoco Contadino, Melissa P. and I Am Love, which was nominated for Best Costume Design at the 82nd Academy Awards, and for Best Foreign Film at the 68th Golden Globes and the 64th BAFTA Awards. Guadagnino was a jury member at the 67th Venice Film Festival.

ALEKSEI GUSKOV

Russian actor and producer Aleksei Guskov was born in Brzeg, Poland in 1958. He studied rocket engineering at the Bauman State Technical University in Moscow, but after almost five years dropped out to attend the Moscow Art Theatre School. Currently, he is working and teaching at the Moscow Vakhtangov Theater. Best known to the Western public for starring in French filmmaker Radu Mihaileanu’s film Concert (2009), Aleksei Guskov has appeared in over 60 films and TV movies. He gained an enormous popularity in Russia thanks to a TV series, The Border (2001) and the film Garbage Man (2002), in which he plays a former killer who works as a waste collector in a provincial town. In 2011 Guskov played the role of Mako in Italian movies by Matteo Pellegrini. In 2013 he was tapped to play Pope John Paul II in a new Italian TV movie, The Secret Life of Pope Wojtyla. He is also starring in Gabriele Salvatores’ new film The Invisible Boy.

NOÉMIE LVOVSKY

A director, screenwriter and actress, Noémie Lvovsky was born in Paris. After graduating from the Fémis film school, she started out as a screenwriter, working with Arnaud Desplechin on The Life of the Dead (1991) and The Sentinel (1992). In 1994, she directed her first feature film Forget Me starring Valéria Bruni-Tédeschi. Her second feature film, I’m Not Afraid of Life(1999) received the Jean Vigo Prize in 1999. Feelings (2003) won the Louis Delluc Prize in 2003 and earned a nomination for Best Picture at the César Awards in 2004. As an actress, she has been nominated for a César five times, the first in 2001, with her acting debut in the film My Wife is An Actress by Yvan Attal. In 2012 Lvosky wrote, directed and starred in Camille Rewinds, which screened at Cannes in the Directors’ Fortnight, won the Variety Piazza Grande Award at the Locarno Festival, and was nominated for 13 Césars.

AMIR NADERI

Since the 1970s, Amir Naderi has been among the most influential figures of the New Iranian Cinema, developing his knowledge of film on sets where he worked as a teenager. He attracted international attention with film classics such as Harmonica (1973) The Runner (1985) and Water, Wind, Dust (1986). Naderi’s American films have uniquely captured the vanishing texture of New York, premiering at New Directors/ New Films, Venice, Cannes, Tribeca, and Sundance. Sound Barrier (2005) won the Bastone Bianco Filmcritica Prize at the Turin Film Festival. Vegas: Based on a True Story (2008) premiered in competition at Venice. His last work, Cut, shot in Japan, was the Orizzonti section’s Opening Film at Venice in 2011 and the same year won Best Director at the 21st Japanese Professional Movie Awards.

ZHANG YUAN

Born in Nanjing, he is referenced as an exemplar of the pioneers who are grouped into the loosely defined Sixth Generation. The official debut of his career in 1990 is Mama, a semi-documentary account of a mother and her retarded son. His film Beijing Bastards follows Beijing’s youth subculture and Sons blends the line between fiction and documentary film. The transgressive nature of these movies came to the attention of the Ministry of Film, Television and Culture, which issued a statement banning Zhang from filmmaking. In 1996 he presented East Palace, West Palace, China’s first feature with homosexual characters, secretly taken out of China and screened at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. 1999’s Seventeen Years, was the first Chinese film with approval to shoot inside prison, winning the Best Director award at the Venice Film Festival. In 2006, he directed Little Red Flowers. The film garnered a CICAE award at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival).