The fifth Rome International Film Festival (RIFF) has announced the titles for two of this year's side bar sections L'Altro Cinema (Extra) and Occhio sul Mondo (Eye on the world).

The Altro Cinema line up, curated by Mario Sesti, has ten features and fifteen documentaries. The documentaries will compete for the $29,000 (Euros 20,000) Cult prize.

Highlights among the ten features presented in the section include:

  • Mabrouk el Mechri's JCVD a fusion between biopic and mocumentary about action-master Jean-Claude Van Damme.

  • French suspense thriller Martyrs by Pascal Laugier

  • Argentina 's Tres Deseos from Marcelo Trotta and Vivian Imar about the ending of a love story.

  • Denmark 's Thomas Vinterberg's When a Man Comes Home, hailed as a return to his Dogma roots. The story is that of a man afflicted by stuttering who discovers he is the son of a great opera singer.

  • $9.99 Tatia Rosenthal's Sydney-set stop motion feature voiced by Geoffrey Rush and Anthony LaPaglia.

Documentaries include:

  • Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden by Oscar-nominated Morgan Spurlock about the hunt for Bin Laden.

  • Blind Woman Filmmakers comes to Rome from Iran and is a film by Mohammad Shirvani who turns cameras over to blind women, as he teaches them how to use the language of cinema to express themselves.

  • Bob Marley - Exodus '77 from the UK's Anthony Wall about the creation of Bob Marley's famous album.

  • Effedia - Sulla mia cattiva strada , an Italian documentary by TV journalist Teresa Marchesi on the Italian cult folk-singer Fabrizio De Andre.

For the fifth edition, RIFF's Eye on the World section focuses on Brazil and Rome and will feature a showcase of contemporary Brazilian cinema.

The festival has also confirmed several public participation discussions with filmmakers and actors. This year the sessions will feature Al Pacino, Olivier Assayas, Michael Cimino, David Cronenberg as well as Gomorrah star Toni Servillo and Italian actor/director Carlo Verdone.

Separately, Rome will also hold a retrospective of Al Pacino to coincide with the career honours that Pacino will be accepting.

The full line up is expected to be announced October 1. The Rome International Film Festival runs Oct 22-31.

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