Julianne Moore will be one of the great protagonists of the Rome Film Festival 2026. The American actress will in fact receive the Lifetime Achievement Award during the twenty-first edition of the event, scheduled from 13 to 25 October at the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone. This was announced by the president of the Fondazione Cinema per Roma Salvatore Nastasi, following a proposal from the artistic director Paola Malanga.
And the award ceremony will have something cinematically perfect: the award will be given to Moore by Jesse Eisenberg, who directs her in his new film, The Debut, presented at the Festival in the Grand Public section. Eisenberg is also the film's screenwriter, producer and actor. A kind of ideal master of ceremonies to celebrate an actress who has been traversing American cinema for over forty years without ever allowing herself the luxury of predictability.
The award during the screening of The Debut
The Lifetime Achievement Award to Julianne Moore will be presented during the screening of The Debut, included in the program of the Rome Film Festival in the non-competitive Grand Public section, dedicated to cinema for the general public.
The film, lasting 105 minutes, stars, alongside Moore, Paul Giamatti, Halle Bailey, Jesse Eisenberg, Cara Buono, Craig Bierko, Eldar Isgandarov and Bernadette Peters.
Written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, The Debut tells the story of Mona Friedman, a shy and seemingly modest housewife who lands a small part in a community theater show. What seemed like an almost insignificant role, however, becomes an obsession: Mona transforms into a fervent method actress, ready to do anything to defend the artistic integrity of her character, even going to war with the despotic director of the show. A24 will distribute the film in the United States on December 11, 2026.
A premise that seems tailor-made for Moore, an actress capable like few others of transforming the ordinary into restlessness and of finding, behind the surface of normality, cracks, desires, neuroses and sudden chasms.
From Boogie Nights to the Oscar for Still Alice
In Julianne Moore's career, independent cinema and major productions, melodrama and comedy, thrillers and auteur cinema coexist. Among the titles that have become central in her filmography are Boogie Nights, Far From Heaven, The Hours, The Kids Are Alright and of course Still Alice, the film which in 2015 earned her the Oscar for best leading actress.
A filmography in which the characters often seem to live one step away from being lost: apparently solid women, then cracked by a desire, a loss, a discovery or by the simple impossibility of continuing to play the part that society has assigned to them. It is not surprising that Moore found one of his directors of choice in Todd Haynes, from Safe to Far from Heaven up to the most recent May December.
In recent years the actress has continued to alternate between cinema and television: she was the protagonist of The Room Next Door by Pedro Almodóvar, Echo Valley, the Netflix series Sirens and the historical miniseries Mary & George.
Julianne Moore and the big festivals
Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes and BAFTA are just part of a showcase that also tells of Julianne Moore's close relationship with major international festivals. Moore is the first American actress to have received the highest recognition for female performance in the three major European festivals: Berlin, Venice and Cannes, a record that reflects the measure of a career capable of crossing Hollywood and auteur cinema without establishing hierarchies.
Over the years the actress has worked with directors such as Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson, Todd Haynes, Alfonso Cuarón, David Cronenberg, Stephen Daldry, Tom Ford, Atom Egoyan and Pedro Almodóvar, building a gallery of characters who are often fragile and ferocious, vulnerable and unpredictable.
Alongside her work on screen, Moore is also an author of children's books: the Freckleface Strawberry series made the New York Times bestseller list. In 2027 she will also return to the Off-Broadway stage as the protagonist of Faydra, a new version of the classic myth signed by Sarah Ruhl and directed by Les Waters.
Rome will now add another chapter to that sentimental and professional geography. Not an award linked to a single character, but to a journey that has spanned over seventy films and which continues to move between authors, genres and formats without turning into a monument to itself.
Because the point, perhaps, is precisely this: Julianne Moore will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award while presenting a new film. It's not time to look back yet. In Rome we will celebrate the road travelled, of course, but with our eyes already focused on the next scene.
