The 2010 International Rome Film Festival was held from October 28 through November 5.
The two French films presented in competition met with an enthusiastic welcome. Guillaume Canet's Little White Lies looks set to sign a distribution deal after the director held several meetings with distributors, while Romain Duris's performance in The Big Picture by Eric Lartigau made a strong impression on the Italian media.
The Franco-Belgian co-production Kill Me Please by Olias Barco picked up the festival's top prize, the Marcus Aurelius Award for Best Film. Starring Aurélien Recoing, Virginie Efira, Benoît Poelvoorde, and Bouli Lanners, Kill Me Please is a black comedy on the subject of euthanasia.
Overall, films played to packed theaters of young and enthusiastic spectators. Italian media representatives and distributors are actively involved in promoting this festival, which, now in its fifth year, appears to have found its stride.
The Rome film market, known as The Business Street, maintained its highly original style that focuses on conviviality and an informal atmosphere, with no need to reserve booths, located in a unique setting at the Hotel Bernini terrace. French sales agents were particularly well-represented, accounting for almost half of all companies participating in the market. The only disappointment, however, was the low audience numbers in screening theaters. The Business Street is presented as a "post-Toronto" and "pre-AFM" film market. Its closeness in timing with this year's Los Angeles film market proved a handicap for both events, however, with a number of European distributors choosing not to attend either event.
The Rome Film Market also offers numerous seminars, chiefly aimed at the Italian market and the co-production market with a focus on second feature film proposals (the New Cinema Network), a well organized and highly selective event.
The French Embassy teamed up with Unifrance to host an evening event held in honor of French cinema on October 29, at which guests included Guillaume Canet, Fanny Ardant, Cécile Cassel, French producers and sales agents present in Rome, as well as a host of Italian distributors and journalists.
