Director of Good Boy to Head Jury at Rome Film Festival

Director and screenwriter Jan Komasa will chair the jury of the main competition at the Rome Film Festival, the “Progressive Cinema Competition.”

The 21st Rome Film Festival will take place from October 13 to 25 at the Auditorium Parco della Musica complex and at other venues throughout the city. Jan Komasa will head the jury of the main competition, which will evaluate 18 films. Joining him on the jury will be, among others, Brazilian actress and producer Alice Braga, Spanish director, screenwriter and editor Carlos Marques-Marcet, and Italian-American director and screenwriter Alessio Rigo de Righi.

Another Polish highlight of this year’s festival will be a screening of Kasia Smutniak’s Mustang in the section dedicated to the best documentary films.

Jan Komasa is the director of, among other films, Suicide Room, Warsaw 44, and Corpus Christi, which was nominated for an Oscar in the Best International Feature Film category. In 2024, he premiered his English-language debut, the psychological drama Anniversary, starring Hollywood stars Diane Lane and Kyle Chandler.

Good Boy, released in 2025, is his second English-language film. The thriller, produced with the support of the Kujawy and Pomorze Film Fund, received the prestigious Audience Award at the 51st Polish Feature Film Festival in Gdynia in September this year. Anson Boon, who plays the title character, received the award for Best Actor. The jury, chaired by Krzysztof Zanussi, also honoured the screenwriters of Good Boy, Bartek Bartosik and Naqqash Khalid, as well as editor Agnieszka Glińska.

Good Boy is a thriller about Tommy, a young man immersed in a world of drugs and violence. One day, the 19-year-old is kidnapped by a mysterious man who wants to rehabilitate him and turn him into a “good boy.” The cast features several major stars. The lead role is played by Anson Boon, whose talent we have seen in films such as 1917 and the miniseries Pistol, about the history of the Sex Pistols. Stephen Graham, known for the series Adolescence and for his roles in Pirates of the Caribbean and The Irishman, plays Chris, the man who kidnapped Tommy. His wife is played by Andrea Riseborough. The British actress received an Oscar nomination for her performance in To Leslie.

Dariusz Czołgowski
Department of Promotion

October 5, 2026