Robert De Niro is jetting into Rome to be on hand Monday to introduce the restored version of Bernardo Bertolucci‘s “Novecento,” marking the 50th anniversary of the historical epic shot in 1976.
Besides De Niro, the film’s stellar cast also comprised Gérard Depardieu, Burt Lancaster, Dominique Sanda and Donald Sutherland.
The special two-part screening, being held in Piazza San Cosimato in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood, is the grand finale of the Eternal City’s Il Cinema in Piazza summer screenings series. The event is run by Fondazione Piccolo America, the feisty group of young film buffs headed by Valerio Carocci that have been shaking things up for years after occupying the nearby shuttered Cinema America movie theater.
The event is being billed as a tribute to Rome and to Bertolucci, who organizers said in a statement was among the first “to support the fight to defend the Italian capital’s cultural spaces” along with fellow directors Ettore Scola, Ugo Gregoretti and Francesco Rosi. Bertolucci, who was a Piccolo America supporter, died at 77 in 2018.
De Niro, 82, is scheduled to take part in an onstage conversation with Carocci and New York-based journalist and academic Antonio Monda, who is also a former Rome Film Festival chief.
