ROME: It’s the lion against the she-wolf. Italy’s film industry is bracing for a war of the festivals between Venice’s venerable “Mostra del Cinema”, whose 63rd edition starts on August 30, and Rome’s new international film competition which makes its debut in mid-October.

Vague pledges of cooperation between the two events have done little to quash talk of an inevitable rivalry that could cast a shadow over Venice’s Lido, which is already battling organisational and financial problems of its own.

“They are bound to be competing with each other for films and stars, because the dates are so close,” said Tullio Kezich, a leading Italian film critic and a Venice festival veteran.

“Rome is perfectly entitled to have its own festival. But why not do it in March, rather than barely a month after Venice ends?” he asked.

Organisers of the Rome event, the pet project of the city’s centre-left mayor and movie buff Walter Veltroni, have been at pains to explain that their “Festa del Cinema” is not meant to steal the show from the Lido, the world’s oldest film festival.

“This is a different creature,” said Veltroni of the Rome festival, whose advertisements feature the ancient city symbol of the she-wolf just as Venice sports a winged lion as its logo.

Rome has yet to announce its programme, but Veltroni said his would be a city festival with a jury made up of ordinary film-goers and a more popular approach than the traditionally high-brow Venice extravaganza.

He also denied that Rome was going to divert state money away from Venice at a time when Italy’s cash-strapped government has been cutting funding for cultural events.

The festival’s budget of $9 million would come mostly from private funds, he said.

Veltroni has long cherished the idea of boosting Italy’s capital with a high-profile film event, hoping to build on the Eternal City’s role as a film-making hub thanks to its famed Cinecitta studios.

Venice officials, however, are not impressed.

“If I find out that Rome is getting state funding for its festival, I’ll go for my gun,” Venice’s mayor Massimo Cacciari, a philosopher who is also a member of the centre-left, said in a recent newspaper interview.

Kezich says the cultural rivalry between the capital and the picturesque canal city goes back to 1932, when fascist dictator Benito Mussolini inaugurated the Venice festival.—Reuters