Rome Film Fest 2020: the best films we have seen

In a Rome Film Fest 2020 marked by social distancing and the rapid worsening of the health situation, we have had the opportunity to see some of the films that will keep us company in the coming months. From animation to comedy, passing through documentaries and new projects by great authors such as Thomas Vinterberg, François Ozon And Steve McQueenwe have compiled a list of the best stocks able to satisfy all tastes and needs, which we therefore invite you to consider and include in your watchlists.

The opening film of the Rome Film Fest 2020: Soul

The honor of opening the dance at the Rome Film Fest 2020 went to Soul, a new project by the brand Pixar and directed by Pete Docter, two-time Academy Award winner for Up and Inside Out, as well as deserving of the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award of the event. And it is precisely to Inside Out that the thought inevitably runs in the course of this work, which creates yet another hymn to life that this time ranges not on the imaginary of our thoughts, but on that of our souls between life and death. All to the sound of jazz, passion of the protagonist Joe Gardner, to whom he lends his voice Jamie Foxx. As previously announced, Soul will skip theatrical release and arrive directly on Disney + on December 25th.

Palm Springs – Live like there’s no tomorrow

Between comedy, romance and science fiction, Palm Springs – Live as if there was no tomorrow, it quickly became a cult in the United States, starring Andy Samberg, JK Simmons And Cristin Milioti, known for the role of longed-for mother Tracy McConnell in How I Met Your Mother. Cristin Milioti plays a woman who meets the love of her life at a wedding, played in this case by Andy Samberg (Brooklyn Nine-Nine).

However, if you think you are faced with a sugary rom-com that has already been seen and reviewed, you are off track. Palm Springs Protagonists – Live as if there was no tomorrow, new work directed by Max Barbakow, they find themselves stuck inside the marriage in a real time loop, in the wake of what we saw in Ricomincio da capo or, in horror sauce, in the saga of Wishes for your death. Not just romance, then, but also frustration, disillusionment and confusion.

My name is Francesco Totti at the Rome Film Fest 2020

Another particularly awaited event of the Rome Film Fest 2020 was undoubtedly My name is Francesco Totti, a docu-film dedicated to the former captain of Rome who, due to the untimely death of his father Enzo, was unable to participate in the event, as originally planned. . Own Francesco Totti is the real co-director of this work together with Alex Infascelli (former narrator of another champion like Stanley Kubrick in the valuable S Is for Stanley – Thirty years behind the wheel for Stanley Kubrick), accompanying with his irony mixed with shyness an excursus on the life and career of one of the greatest players in the history of Italian football.

Rome Film Fest 2020: the best films we have seen

Sports feats are the setting for what is first and foremost the behind-the-scenes story of an existence moved by an obsession with games and condemned to the eternal light of the spotlight. Given the considerable collection (around 600,000 euros), the stay in the room, initially set at three days, was extended.

Ammonite

Francis Lee wrote and directed Ammonite, an Oscar-winning film about paleontologist Mary Anning, played by Kate Winsletand his relationship with Charlotte Murchison, played by Saoirse Ronan. In 1840 Mary Anning worked alone on the wild south English coast of Lyme Regis; Mary is a fossil hunter – to the point where she can boast the discovery of an ichthyosaur skull, exhibited at the British Museum – and she runs, with her mother, a small trade in ammonites, only for tourists.

A scientist, Roderich Murchison, attracted by her fame, despite the lack of real recognition from the scientific world, visits her in the company of his wife Charlotte. Mary and Charlotte are two different women, from completely different worlds. Yet despite the gulf between their social spheres and their personalities, they discover that each of them can offer the other what she was looking for: the knowledge that they are not alone.

Supernova

Oscar-winning actor Colin Firth (The Secret Garden, The King’s Speech) e Stanley Tucci (The King’s Man – The origins, Amabili Remnants) are the protagonists of Supernova, a poignant love story on the road directed by Harry Macqueen. Sam and Tusker have been together for twenty years and are very much in love. Two years after Tusker’s early diagnosis of dementia, their lives have been fundamentally turned upside down. Sam has enormous difficulty in accepting his inexorable decline; what follows is that time together is more and more precious and every moment they share has a weight that it did not have before.

As long as Tusker is still able to travel, the couple decide to leave to meet friends and family and visit the places of their past. Supernova is a powerful, provocative and current film, a film that speaks of bewilderment, of identity, but above all it speaks of what each of us is willing to do for the person he loves.

Small Ax – Red, White and Blue

Conceived as part of an anthology series, which includes five original films, Red, White and Blue is the new film directed by the director Steve McQueen (Hunger, Shame, 12 years a slave), included in the collective project Small Ax. Steve McQueen directs John Boyega in a drama centering on the true story of Leroy Logan, a young forensic scientist who, in 1982, decides to do more of his solitary lab work. After witnessing the attack of his father by two policemen, Leroy Logan decides to become a police officer, an ambition born from the hope of wanting to change the racist attitudes of the London police from within. Leroy must deal with the consequences of paternal disapproval and contempt that his role as an agent in the metropolitan police evokes in a racist society.

Tigers

Another notable football story presented during the Rome Film Fest 2020, in collaboration with Alice nella città, is Tigers, an Italian-Swedish co-production that tells the true story of Martin Bengtsson, a former talent who arrived in the spring of Inter in 2004 amid the curiosity and enthusiasm of the public and professionals, but who ended up leaving the team and retiring prematurely from sport due to a severe form of depression. Middle chapter of an ideal trilogy dedicated to the sport of Ronnie Sandahlformer writer of Borg McEnroe and Perfect (to be directed by Olivia Wilde), Tigers tears open the veil of hypocrisy on a toxic, hyper-competitive environment always striving towards the pursuit of perfection, even at the expense of the physical and mental health of athletes. The protagonist’s performance was amazing Erik Engewhich we will surely hear more about.

Another round

Winner al BFI London Film Festival 2020 as best film, and presented during the Rome Film Fest, Another ride is the new film by the Danish director Thomas Vinterberg, an intelligent and provocative alcoholic buddy movie. Martin and three of his friends, all high school teachers, tired, dull and bored, undertake a very special experiment to subvert their condition of apathy: according to the theory of the Norwegian Finn Skårderud, we were all born with a small amount of alcohol already present in the blood, and a little drunkenness could open our minds to the world around us and increase our creativity. Encouraged by this theory, the four friends decide to start drinking regularly every day, to make up for the lack of alcohol that the man carries with him since birth. The first results are positive and the experiment turns into a real academic study.

Summer ’85

The new project by the well-known French filmmaker was also presented at the Rome Film Fest 2020 François Ozon (Swimming Pool, Ricky – A story of love and freedom, Young and beautiful) Summer ’85, with protagonists Félix Lefebvre And Benjamin Voisin And Valeria Bruni Tedeschthe. Inside a teen movie system, in the dreamy setting of the 1980s, there is a poignant story of sentimental training, which plays with pop imagery (the explicit quote from Il tempo delle mele is splendid) and with nostalgia effect to stage a tale with dark and murky colors, in which the link between passion and anger and between love and death is indissoluble. Summer ’85 will soon be released by Academy Two.