Actor-director Sergio Castellitto will head the International Jury of the International Rome Film Festival (28th October - 5th November 2010), it was announced today by the Festival's President Gian Luigi Rondi. The other members of the Jury will be: Italian journalist and writer Natalia Aspesi, winner of the Pietro Bianchi Award for film criticism; director Ulu Grosbard (United States - Belgium), who has directed feature films such as Falling in Love with Meryl Streep and True Confessions with Robert De Niro; UK best selling author Patrick McGrath (Asylum and Spider); German director Edgar Reitz (Heimat), and Olga Sviblova, director of the Moscow Multimedia Arts Museum.

The films in competition in the Official Selection will be judged by the six members of the International Jury which will then award the "Marc'Aurelio for Best Film", the "Marc'Aurelio for Best Actress", the "Marc'Aurelio for Best Actor", and the "Marc'Aurelio Grand Jury" Awards.

"Castellitto is one of our most prestigious cinema and television actors. He is very successful, well-known and respected on the international circuit, and has directed award winning films that have received great appreciation from critics and audiences alike," said Rondi in announcing the Jury line-up. 

"I am very happy and grateful to Gian Luigi Rondi, the Festival's Artistic Director Piera Detassis and all of those who thought of me for this assignment. The International Rome Film Festival has grown tremendously in these past years, and has become a place where one can see and talk about Cinema. I know first hand the hard work and efforts all artists put into a film.  It will be a great pleasure and honour for me to head such a Jury," said Castellitto.

THE MEMBERS OF THE JURY

Sergio Castellitto

Actor-director Sergio Castellitto first captured audiences with his work in Ricky Tognazzi's and Carlo Verdone's comedies Piccoli equivoci (1989) and Stasera a casa di Alice (1990) and his engaging performances in films such as Marco Ferrari's La carne (1991) and Marco Bellocchio's L'Ora di Religione (2002).   A multi-award winner, he is the recipient of two Nastri d'Argento (Francesca Archibugi's  Il grande cocomero (1993); Giuseppe Tornatore's  L'uomo delle Stelle (1995); and a David di Donatello award (Best Leading Actor) for his performance in Non ti muovere (2004), based on the novel of the same title written by Margaret Mazzantini which he directed and adapted.  He also lent his voice in the French version of Luc Besson's film Arthur and the Invisibles (2006) and he played the role of King Miraz in the second chapter of The Chronicals of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008). He also had the lead role in Alessandra Angelini's Alza la testa (2009), presented during the fourth edition of the International Rome Film Festival.

Natalia Aspesi

A winner of the Pietro Bianchi Award for film criticism, Aspesi started working as a journalist in the 60's for the daily newspaper La Notte.  She then moved on to the daily Il Giorno, and subsequently became a correspondent for La Repubblica, where she still continues to work running a column entitled "Questioni di cuore" ("Heart Matters"), and by writing articles about news, literature, and cinema.

Ulu Grosbard

A Belgian theater and cinema director, Grosbard started his career as a diamond-cutter.  He later moved to the U.S. where he studied at Chicago University and at the Yale School of Drama. In the '60s, he worked as an assistant to, among others, Elia Kazan, Robert Rossen and Arthur Penn.  He made his directorial debut in 1968 with The Subject Was Roses and went on to direct several feature films such as: Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971); Straight Time, (1978); True Confessions (1981); Falling in Love (1984); Georgia (1995) and The Deep End of the Ocean (1999). Very active in theater, Grosbard has directed many successful Broadway comedies and lives in New York.

Patrick McGrath

McGrath is the author of several books, among them Asylum (1996), one of the major bestsellers in Italy.  Three of his other books have been made into films, among them Spider (2002), directed by David Cronenberg and adapted by McGrath himself. His latest work is Constance (2010). McGrath's books are published in Italy by Bompiani.

Edgar Reitz  

A German director and screenwriter, Reitz is most known for his much appreciated series Heimat.   He claimed the right to create the "New German cinema" in 1962 with the "Oberhausen Manifesto", and in 1963 founded the "Institut für Filmgestaltung" with Alexander Kluge in Ulma, of which he was director until 1968.   His first feature film Mahlzeiten received the Best Film Award at the Venice Film Festival in 1967.  Between 1968 and 1969, he directed two more feature films: Uxmal and Cardillac, the former actually remaining unpublished.  He is the founder of Karlsruhe's "Europäisches Institut des Kinofilms" ("European Cinema Institute"), and teaches cinema at the "Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung" in Karlsruhe.  He presented his last film of the trilogy: Heimat 3 in 2004.

Olga Sviblova

Sviblova graduated in Psychology at Moscow's State University and has a PhD in Art Psychology.  From 1987 to 1995, she wrote and directed several documentaries, such as the award-winning Krivoarbatski Pereulok, 12 about Russian architect Konstantin Stepanovič Mel'nikov; The Black Square about Avant-garde Russian art (1953-1988); In Search of a Happy End and Dina Verni.  She is the founder of The Moscow House of Photography (1996) which became the Multimedia Art Museum in 2003, of which she is the director.  Between 1996 and 2009, Sviblova supervised more than 500 exhibitions of Russian artists both in Russia and abroad. She also worked as the artistic director of several photography festivals (1997 - 2008) and was responsible for the Russian Pavilion of Contemporary Art at the Venice Biennale in both 2007 and 2009.