David Lynch, Ian McKellen, Xavier Dolan set for Rome Film Fest events

PanARMENIAN.Net - David Lynch will be feted with a lifetime achievement award by the Rome Film Festival where the U.S. director of “Blue Velvet” and “Twin Peaks” will also hold an onstage conversation with artistic director Antonio Monda, Variety said.

Monda at a Rome press luncheon on Tuesday, June 27, called Lynch “simply the coolest director alive.” He also announced that British actor Ian McKellen; French Canadian wunderkind director/actor Xavier Dolan; Oscar-winning British actress Vanessa Redgrave and U.S. author Chuck Palahniuk (“Fight Club”) will be participating in other public conversations within the fest’s dedicated Close Encounters section.

As for movies, Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming “Logan Lucky” will have its European preem in Rome. The heist comedy with an all star cast that includes Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Hilary Swank, Katie Holmes and a platinum-coiffed Daniel Craig, hits U.S. theatres on August 18.

The twelfth edition of the Rome fest will run October 26-November 5, separately from Rome’s MIA film and TV market which this year has been scheduled for October 19-23, so the mart can dovetail with the October 16-19 MIPCOM TV market in Cannes. The Rome fest and the MIA mart, which so far had run side-by-side, will go back to being concurrent in 2018, Monda said.

Special Rome fest events will include Brooklyn-based Italian artist Andrea Mastrovito’s animation project “NYsferatu.” Mastrovito has hand-designed an animated adaptation of Friedrich W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu,” the seminal 1922 mute film adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, resetting it in contemporary New York City. “NYsferatu” will play accompanied by a live orchestra.

Monda said that like last year the fest has recruited New York Times chief film critic A.O. Scott and Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang, who will make the trek and participate in a panel on film criticism and its role and relevance in the changing global media landscape. They will be joined, among other participants, by Colombia University film professor Annette Insdorf.

The full lineup of the Rome Film Festival’s 12th edition will be announced on October 10.