What I Want to Watch at Rome Film Fest 2026

Every year, Rome Film Fest presents me with the same problem: an ambitious list of films I want to see and a rather less ambitious number I'll realistically get to.

This year will be no different, but there are many reasons to be optimistic. A new Zvyagintsev, a Dostoevsky adaptation, a couple of films looking at the questionable side of the art world, and an uncomfortable examination of European wealth and family dysfunction.

Looking at what I’ve selected, certain preoccupations of mine become apparent. Artistic genius and the people who sustain it. The authority of cultural institutions. Money, class and the various ways in which power disguises itself as something more respectable. And, apparently, a disproportionate interest in deeply dysfunctional families.

Here are 8 films I'm hoping to catch.

Eurotrash: Frauke Finsterwalder

The dysfunctions of the European bourgeoisie are always compelling, especially when they're examined without much sympathy.

Adapted from Christian Kracht's novel, Eurotrash follows a mother and son travelling through Switzerland, accompanied by inherited wealth, family resentments and the less convenient inheritance of twentieth-century European history.

The family dysfunction and Swiss money combo is already quite persuasive but what appeals to me most is the its exploration of the relationship between privilege and historical guilt. Wealth passes comfortably between generations whereas moral responsibility proves rather more difficult to distribute. I think there is something fascinating and inherently uncomfortable about families who have the means to preserve their past but would rather not examine it too closely.

Giorni felici: Susanna Nicchiarelli

I admire Nicchiarelli's ability to approach women who resist easy categorisation. In Nico, 1988 and Miss Marx, she was particularly good at exposing the contradictions between public identity and private experience and less interested in making the viewer comfortable about them.

Adapted from ZUZU’s graphic novel, Giorni Felici moves more into fantasy territory. Its protagonist is a young woman who transforms into a winged creature when she experiences intense emotion. I’m intrigued by the idea of giving physical form to the parts of ourselves we are expected to suppress, particularly when it comes to female anger. The possibility of exploring female identity through something more than the usual narratives of self-discovery or emancipation is much more interesting to me.

The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd: Tim Blake Nelson

Amanda Seyfried and Scoot McNairy star in this prison drama about an English teacher trapped in an abusive marriage who begins a relationship with an incarcerated man while teaching creative writing at a maximum-security prison.

I think there's a tendency, particularly in American cinema, to turn institutional violence into a story about individual redemption, as though a sufficiently moving personal encounter might somehow resolve the larger problem.

Nelson's premise suggests something more morally complicated and I’m interested to see whether the film resists the temptation to offer easy moral solutions. At least, I hope so.

The Idiot(s): Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert

Dostoevsky's biography reads rather like something he might have written himself: debt, gambling, exile, extraordinary intellectual ambition and an almost operatic capacity for personal disaster. But it's Anna Snitkina, the young stenographer who became his wife, who makes this adaptation particularly appealing.

The history of artistic genius has been remarkably accommodating of difficult men, and rather less generous towards the women who made their work possible. In reality, Snitkina was far more than a supporting character in Dostoevsky's life. She managed his affairs, helped secure his financial independence and played a substantial role in preserving his legacy.

I appreciate the prospect of a film that shifts the attention away from the tortured genius towards the person who had to deal with the practical consequences of his genius.

The Patron: Julia Thelin

The relationship between artists and those who finance their work has always involved a delicate negotiation between artistic independence, personal taste and economic influence. The language is generally one of generosity and cultural support, although the underlying arrangements are often much more complicated.

Who gets to support culture has never been entirely separate from who gets to shape it and the boundaries between support, influence and expectation can become blurred. I'm curious to see how far The Patron is prepared to explore these questions.

Il caso Modigliani: Luca Rea

In 1984, three sculpted heads were recovered from a canal in Livorno and attributed to Amedeo Modigliani. Experts endorsed them, the art world celebrated, and the discovery attracted enormous attention.

Then the works were revealed to be fakes.

It's an irresistible story. But beyond the spectacle of experts getting it wrong, the story raises some good questions about the authority we assign to cultural institutions.

An object can be transformed into a masterpiece through attribution, provenance and expert consensus. Remove that, and its cultural and financial value disappear overnight.

The object itself, however, hasn't changed.

Elsinore: Simon Stone

I’ve been waiting to see this one! Andrew Scott is Ian Charleson, the Scottish actor who performed Hamlet at the National Theatre while seriously ill with AIDS.

It's an extraordinary premise, particularly given the play deals with mortality, consciousness and the limits of human agency.

There's something poignant and powerful about an actor performing Hamlet's meditations on death whilst confronting his own. What does it mean to continue performing, to inhabit another life on stage, when one's own is precarious?

Simon Stone's theatrical background makes him a particularly interesting choice to direct this story. And Andrew Scott? I would happily watch anything with him in it.

Minotaur: Andrey Zvyagintsev

Of everything on this list, Minotaur is probably the film I'm most eager to see.

Zvyagintsev is adept at exposing the political through the personal. His families are never entirely separate from the societies around them and the cruelty, indifference and moral compromises of private life often seem to mirror those of the state.

His characters are rarely innocent bystanders. They're frequently implicated in the very systems that diminish them, which makes their circumstances all the more unsettling.

I expect it to be devastating.