The 21st Rome Film Fest opened on 13 October at the Auditorium Parco della Musica and runs until 25 October, with Paolo Genovese’s Il rumore delle cose nuove as its opening film.
The 21st Rome Film Fest runs from 13 to 25 October 2026 in Rome, with the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone as its main venue, according to the Italy Meets Hollywood preview of the programme. The artistic director is Paola Malanga. Organisers added an extra day to the festival to handle the rising number of submissions.
The opening film is Il rumore delle cose nuove by Paolo Genovese, which is part of the Grand Public section, according to the same preview. The sources reviewed do not describe the film’s plot or cast.
The festival has an international competition called Progressive Cinema, alongside non-competitive sections for contemporary cinema and audiovisual work. It also includes filmmaker conversations, special screenings, tributes and retrospectives, according to the preview. The list of competition titles and the jury were not available in the sources reviewed, so they are not named.
The Industry Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Tessa Ross, the chief executive of House Productions, for her contributions to international filmmaking, and the director Edward Berger will present it, according to the preview.
There is a conflict between the sources about other honours. A search summary of the festival’s programme said that the actor Javier Bardem would also receive a lifetime achievement award, to be presented by the director Paolo Sorrentino. The Italy Meets Hollywood preview does not mention Bardem, so Delima News cannot confirm it, and readers should check the festival’s official programme.
The festival comes in the middle of the autumn season. The BFI London Film Festival closes on 18 October with The Debut, the Tokyo International Film Festival opens on 26 October, and Busan has just announced its winners, as Delima News reports in separate articles. Rome overlaps with London for six days, a count that Delima News has made from the dates of 13 to 18 October.
The festival runs for 13 days from 13 to 25 October, including the extra day that the organisers added, which is Delima News’ own count from the dates given.
A comparison with the other festivals in the season shows how the dates fit together. The BFI London Film Festival ran from 7 to 18 October with ten films in its official competition, Busan announced its Vision Awards winners this week, with Zogsool winning four, and the Tokyo International Film Festival runs from 26 October to 4 November with 204 films and a 15-film competition, according to Delima News’ reports. Rome, which runs from 13 to 25 October, therefore ends the day before Tokyo opens.
The festival will end on Sunday, 25 October, which is also the date that the Official Charts Company and other sources give for the close of the programme, so the awards of the Progressive Cinema competition are expected to be announced by then. The preview does not give the date of the awards ceremony, the members of the jury or the amount of any prize, and Delima News does not guess them.
The sources reviewed do not give ticket prices, the number of films, the presidents of the juries or the winners of earlier editions, so none of those are given. Delima News will report on the festival’s awards when they are announced.
Image: The Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, the festival’s main venue (file photo). Photo: LPLT / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
