“Leaving Las Vegas” helmer to chair Capri-Hollywood Film Fest

PanARMENIAN.Net - Oscar-nominated director Mike Figgis will be the chairman of the 17th edition of the Capri-Hollywood International Film Festival, The Hollywood Reporter said.

The event, held on the Italian island of Capri, off the coast of Naples, is the last film festival in the world every year, and the first for the following year -- since it starts in December and concludes in January. This next edition runs Dec. 27-Jan. 2.

Pascal Vicedomini, the event’s founder and artistic director, said the festival this year will focus on Italian cinema and will focus on social matters, foregoing the festival’s traditional red carpet in part in order to express “solidarity” with the Italian region of Emilia Romagna, which was hit by a deadly earthquake earlier this year. Vicedomini, who also heads the Ischia Global Fest in Italy and the Los Angeles, Italia Film Fashion and Art Fest in California, said the slogan of the festival this year will be “Cinema means Solidarity.”

Figgis, who earned 1996 Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay for he gritty romantic drama Leaving Las Vegas, most recently came to Italy in connection with the International Rome Film festival in November, where his latest project, the thriller Suspension of Disbelief, screened in the festival’s CinemaXXI sidebar.

The full lineup for the event will be announced Dec. 20.