Rome Film Festival to honor Russian auteur Aleksei Fedorchenko

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Rome Film Festival has announced it will fete Russian auteur Aleksei Fedorchenko. (“Silent Souls”) with its Marco Aurelio of the Future Award and also host the world preem of his new pic, “Angels of Revolution” (pictured) set during the early days of the Soviet state, Variety reported.

This historical drama which unfolds amid 1934 Soviet turmoil is about five Russian avant-garde artists who must reconcile their cultures and artistic visions with ideological conflicts of the era. They find themselves involved in a mission by the newborn government to bring order to populations in the virgin forests of Siberia and the North of the Soviet Union at large.

“Once again Fedorchenko proves to be one of the few contemporary filmmakers able to create renewed perspectives, time after time,” enthused Rome fest director Marco Mueller commenting the helmer’s latest work in a statement.

“Angels” will bow in Rome’s Cinema Today section.

Mueller called Fedorchenko, who is 47, “an absolutely original figure in the landscape of Russian production of the Third Millenium,” first of all because “in every transition from one film to the next he has reinvented both style and genre,” he said.

Fedorchenko debuted with mockumentary “First on the Moon,” about a fictional 1930’s Soviet landing on the moon; followed the pluri-prized “Silent Souls,” about a small ethnic enclave in Russia where everything is a bit strange; and “Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari,” a Decamaron of sorts set in the Ural mountains. “Celestial” competed in Rome in 2012.

In separate news, the Rome fest has also announced it will screen the full first season of Steven Soderbergh’s Cinemax skein “The Knick,” which protag Clive Owen will come tub thump in the Eternal City.

In “The Knick,” which is set at the turn of the twentieth century, Owen plays a brilliant drug-addicted surgeon pushing the boundaries of modern medicine at New York’s Knickerbocker hospital where he treats the city’s poorest immigrants.

Rome’s ninth edition will run October 16-25. The fest’s full lineup will be announced on September 29.