RFF wraps up with talk by award-winning sisters

The ten-day Rome Film Festival wrapped up on Sunday with a number of events across the Italian capital, including a talk by award-winning Italian cinema sisters Alba and Alice Rohrwacher.

They appeared as part of the festival's Close Encounters series, which this year delighted festival audiences with the likes of Cate Blanchett, Isabelle Huppert, Martin Scorsese, and Sigourney Weaver, among others.

Actress Alba Rohrwacher, 39, has won two David di Donatello awards and one Coppa Volpi in Venice, while her younger sister Alice has a David di Donatello as well as a Grand Jury prize and a 2018 Best Screenplay award at Cannes under her belt.

Alice Rohrwacher's movie Happy as Lazzaro, described as "a time-bending fable about Italy's transition from a rural society to modernity", has sold widely around the world, including to China, Germany, Spain, and Britain, while Netflix acquired the North and Latin American rights, Variety entertainment trade weekly reported.

Legendary director Scorsese, who packed Rome's Auditorium della Musica venue with adoring fans of all ages at his Close Encounter talk last week, named Alice Rohrwacher among the contemporary Italian directors he appreciates.

On Saturday, lovers of cinema were treated to a talk by Iranian artist and director Shirin Neshat, who has exhibited solo at major museums around the world and is the winner of an International Award at the Venice Biennale (1999) and of a Silver Lion in Venice (2009), among many other prizes.

Neshat, 61, addressed what she called "a universal subject: the question of what it takes to be a woman artist today as we battle between the traditional expectations of family and having children and the desire to devote yourself to your passion, to your art."

Festivalgoers awarded the People's Choice prize to one of the Italian films in the official selection lineup, Il Vizio della Speranza (The Vice of Hope) by Edoardo De Angelis, who has won multiple awards in Italy for his work in the past.

A story of revenge and reconciliation, the movie is about a woman without dreams or desires who works as a cleaning lady in a wealthy household, and whose life takes an unexpected turn.

The festival's closing film was Notti Magiche (Magical Nights) by director Paolo Virzì. Set in Rome in 1990, the movie is about three aspiring young screenwriters who are suspected of the murder of a famous film producer on the night that Italy's national football team is eliminated from the World Cup by Argentina.

The last day of the 13th edition of the Rome Film Festival ended with screenings of films from the official lineup in movie theaters around the city, plus a concert of film scores by master composers Ennio Morricone (winner of several Oscars, Grammys, Golden Globes, and a Venice Golden Lion for his work) and Oscar-winner Nicola Piovani.

This year's edition screened 91 movies and posted a 6-percent increase in terms of public attendance compared with 2017, according to organizers.