Javier Bardem is set to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Rome Film Festival, adding a major career honor to a festival appearance that will also put one of his latest films in front of Rome audiences.
The Oscar-winning actor will be on hand to present a screening of “The Beloved” (“El ser querido”), the Spanish-language film from director Rodrigo Sorogoyen. The title is being shown in the festival’s best of the fests section after its world premiere at Cannes.
Bardem’s Rome honor will be presented by Paolo Sorrentino, the Oscar-winning director of “The Great Beauty.” The award was announced in a statement by Salvatore Nastasi, president of the Fondazione Cinema per Roma, the organization that oversees the festival. Paola Malanga serves as artistic director of the event.
A Cannes title heads to Rome
“The Beloved” gives Bardem a role centered on family rupture, artistic collaboration and unresolved trauma. In the film, he plays Esteban Martinez, an acclaimed film director whose past is marked by violence and excess. After years of estrangement, Esteban reunites with his daughter, a struggling actress, so the two can make a movie together.
That professional reunion forces both characters to face a painful history they had avoided confronting. The film’s presence in Rome’s best of the fests lineup places it among titles arriving at the festival after launching elsewhere on the international circuit.
For Bardem, the Rome appearance comes during a period of multiple high-profile screen projects. He was recently at the Venice Film Festival with Florian Zeller’s “Bunker,” in which he stars alongside his wife, Penelope Cruz.
In “Bunker,” Bardem and Cruz play a husband and wife whose 17-year marriage begins to fall apart after Bardem’s character, an architect, agrees to design a survivalist bunker for a tech billionaire.
More screen work ahead
Beyond “The Beloved” and “Bunker,” Bardem is also due back on screen as Stilgar in Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Three.” Stilgar is the leader of a tribe that helps Chalamet’s character, Paul Atreides.
The actor has also recently wrapped production on Amazon MGM Studios’ “Hello & Paris,” in which he appears opposite Kate Hudson.
The Rome Film Festival is scheduled to run Oct. 13-25.