US films dominate Rome festival line-up

The films in competition have a strong American and Italian presence. There's also the Iranian film Acrid (Gass) by Kiarash Asadizadeh.

Joaquin Phoenix in a scene from Her. Courtesy Warner Bros Pictures / AP Photo

The American director Spike Jonze’s Her will be one of the hotly anticipated premieres at the Rome Film Festival.

Marco Mueller, formerly the head of the Venice Film Festival, on Monday unveiled a line-up featuring Iranian, Brazilian, Chilean, Japanese, Mexican and Portuguese films.

Of the 18 films in competition, 17 are world or international premieres, with a strong American and Italian presence in particular.

The US director James Gray, best known for his 2007 crime drama We Own the Night, will head up the jury for the festival, which runs from November 8 to 17.

Mueller said there was no overriding theme linking the films selected: “We chose the ones that moved us, that spoke to our hearts, our guts,” he said.

Jonze’s Her, already a favourite with critics given a first look at the recent New York Film Festival, stars Joaquin Phoenix as a Los Angeles-based man who gets a new operating system on his mobile phone that answers his daily questions.

Scott Cooper’s US thriller Out of the Furnace – produced by Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio – will also have its international premiere. Starring Christian Bale, Casey Affleck and Willem Dafoe, it tells the tale of two brothers dreaming of a better life in the poverty-hit Rust Belt, who end up drawn into a spiral of violence with a ruthless gang.

The competition’s ambitious line-up includes Acrid by Iran’s Kiarash Asadizadeh’s, Seventh Code by Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Blue Sky Bones by China’s Jian Cui.

Mueller also promised a “return to real Italian comedy” with the opening screening, Giovanni Veronesi’s The Fifth Wheel, about an unlikely everyman hero.

The new Hunger Games instalment, Catching Fire, directed by Francis Lawrence, will open out of competition.

The festival will also host a masterclass with The Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme.