ROMA FICTION FEST ROMA FICTION FEST

The RomaFictionFest has a new artistic director, filmmaker Giuseppe Piccioni, and it also turns ten years old this year, which is young for a festival that is certainly long on foresight. Today, in fact, serial television has proved its mettle as the best-loved and most-quoted form of audiovisual narrative. Even our leading filmmakers are fascinated by TV series, and the much heralded genre swapping is now official, with films often serving as the original creative prototype for spin-off TV series that reach all households and take off online, while the new mega-broadcasters like Sky, Netflix or Amazon produce and distribute films for theatrical distribution as well.

The FictionFest in Rome, created by the APT together with the Lazio Region and the Chamber of Commerce, happens to be perfectly in line with the overall strategy of the Fondazione Cinema per Roma, which is producing it for the second year in a row. Our aim is to unite all the creative forces and producers in the audiovisual industry in Rome and Lazio by means of events that take place in the capital and its hinterland. For this impressive joint effort I hasten to thank, first of all, the president of the Lazio Region, Nicola Zingaretti, the Chamber of Commerce and its president Lorenzo Tagliavanti, and especially the president of the Television Producers' Association (APT), Marco Follini, and its general secretary Chiara Sbarigia. And of course, the programmers at the FictionFest and the indefatigable team at the foundation of which I am president - a team under the guidance of our general director Francesca Via, all of whom have pulled out all the stops to do the job in an astonishingly short time. Thanks as well to our Board of Directors, the statutory auditors and our counsellor Laura Delli Colli.

It's the tenth anniversary, and to celebrate a look at the highlights of this edition is in order. First of all, the novelty of Giuseppe Piccioni at the helm of the event: a "pure" filmmaker and hence a clear sign of that fusion that has been accomplished between film and TV drama, which we mentioned at the outset. We wish him all the best in his new guise. It's no accident that the festival will feature the premiere of a TV series by another major auteur filmmaker, Gus Van Sant: When We Rise, which evokes the early days of the struggle for gay rights. And the festival's jury president is none other than Oscar®-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss, also seen here playing Madoff in the series of the same name, devoted to the most infamous con man in the era of freewheeling finance. Then there's the highly relevant theme of diversity in many shows with a female slant, starting with the Italian series created by Cristina Comencini, Di padre in figlia, and also represented by the powerful portraits of women in Better Things, Good Behavior, The Kettering Incident, and Fleabag. Another tribute to women is the presence on the jury of Annabel Scholey, the famous countess from I medici, and the Fiction Fest's homage to Shonda Rhymes, the extraordinary talent who changed the face of TV series forever, with cult hits like Grey's Anatomy and Scandal. Meanwhile, a more 'retro' tribute is represented by a new venue, the Sala Cult, where festivalgoers can indulge in veritable marathon viewings of modern classics like Boris or Six Feet Under.

Lastly, along with the above-mentioned Di padre in figlia, the FictionFest devotes considerable attention to Italian shows and players in the very year that our TV series and TV movies have taken the industry to another level, in terms of quality, international appeal and innovation. Some names? I medici, The Young Pope, Gomorra 2, La mafia uccide solo d'estate and Rocco Schiavone, and they will be the talk of the Fest talks, surely. Last season's award-winning film director Paolo Genovese (for the film Perfect Strangers) will be on hand to present Immaturi, a TV series based on another hit film of his, while actor Elio Germano dons the guise of film great Nino Manfredi in In arte Nino, directed by Luca Manfredi, the actor's son.

Once again, film and our impressive film heritage manage to blend most harmoniously with serial television: it's a way to remind even younger viewers and the youngest of all - to whom the RomaFictionFest devotes an entire kaleidoscopic section, Kids & Teens - of the faces and the stories that have colored and lightened our lives, thanks to the magical exchange between the big screen and the small screen - or perhaps we should say, by now, the myriad small screens of our modern lives.

Piera Detassis

Presidente Fondazione Cinema per Roma