Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn will be the opening night film at the 14th Rome Film Fest, which will run from Oct. 17 to 27 at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome. It was announced by Artistic Director Antonio Monda and Laura Delli Colli, President of Fondazione Cinema per Roma, in agreement with General Manager Francesca Via.
“Motherless Brooklyn is a magnificent noir, in the tradition of the finest classic cinema, and a compelling adaptation of the excellent novel by Jonathan Lethem,” Monda declared. “Edward Norton displays a firm hand and unblinking eye in directing this eternal story of ambition, corruption and racism. It is a great honour to open the Rome Film Fest with a film of such quality.”
Then, on Oct. 18, Norton will be the focus of the Rome Film Fest’s traditional Close Encounter – an onstage conversation with Antonio Monda, in which they will discuss Motherless Brooklyn and delve into the most important events of his cinematic career, with clips from some of his memorable films.
“Italian cinema has had an enormous impact on my own tastes and aspirations as a filmmaker,” Norton stated, “and so to have my film open the fest in Rome is truly a fantasy made real. It’s truly a great honor, and I’m so delighted. And I believe, though this is an American epic and a New York noir, that Italian audiences will quickly feel the resonance of the themes within their own recent experience.”
Three-time Oscar nominee Edward Norton (Birdman or [the Unexpected Virtue of Innocence], American History X, Primal Fear) directed, wrote, produced and stars in Motherless Brooklyn.
Norton plays Lionel Essrog, a lonely private detective living with Tourette Syndrome, who ventures to solve the murder of his mentor and only friend, Frank Minna. Armed only with a few clues and the engine of his obsessive mind, Lionel unravels closely-guarded secrets that hold the fate of New York in the balance. In a mystery that carries him from gin-soaked jazz clubs in Harlem to the hard-edged slums of Brooklyn and, finally, into the gilded halls of New York’s power brokers, Lionel contends with thugs, corruption and the most dangerous man in the city to honor his friend and save the woman who might be his own salvation.
The stellar ensemble cast also includes Bruce Willis, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Bobby Cannavale, Cherry Jones, Michael Kenneth Williams, Leslie Mann, Ethan Suplee, Dallas Roberts, Josh Pais, Robert Ray Wisdom, Fisher Stevens, with Alec Baldwin and Willem Dafoe.
The film will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures and will be released internationally beginning Oct. 31.