American Politics Retrospective at Rome Film Fest Explores Power and Nation

The Rome Film Festival (Festa del Cinema di Roma) is concluding its American Politics retrospective, curated by Mario Sesti, timed to the US presidential election. The section examines how cinema has portrayed charismatic political figures, power mechanisms, and the idea of nation. Films include Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, Oliver Stone's Nixon (Stone also appears in the official section with Snowden, a film about surveillance), D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), and Nate Parker's 2016 film of the same name, which offers a counter-perspective from a Virginia slave. Other titles are Robert Rossen's All the King's Men (1946), Primary (1960), and Hal Ashby's Being There (1979), starring Peter Sellers as Chance the gardener, whose simple plant talk is misinterpreted as political metaphor. The article notes that reality has again surpassed fiction.