Movie buffs prepare: the Italian Film Festival is coming to Tauranga.

Featuring a heady selection of films that celebrate Italian life in all its forms, the Cinema Italiano Festival will begin its week-long screening on Friday July 7.

Curated by Italian actor, director and playwright Paolo Rotondo, the festival opened in Christchurch in June, and will move through the country via Nelson, Tauranga, Havelock North, Auckland and Wellington before its final screenings in Napier in December.

Paolo says this year the Festival will bring the Italian community, Kiwis and Italian culture together around the ‘light of cinema'.

'I am extremely proud and thrilled about our 2017 line-up,” he says. 'Our resources are tiny but our ambitions are great – that is to create a daring, innovative, charming and inclusive event for all tastes.”

The Cinema Italiano Festival will honour Italian filmmaking past and present with an impressive and interesting line-up of cinematic treats. The Tauranga leg of the festival will open at Rialto Cinema with a digitally-remastered version of the classic comedy Roman Holiday, a giddy Valentine to Roma starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck.

Other Festival highlights include Nunziante's comedy Where Am I Going?, the highest grossing film in Italian cinema history; Genovese's dramatic comedy Perfect Strangers, which explores what happens when a group of good friends gather for dinner and take part in an innocent experiment, resulting in some eye-opening disclosure; and Visconti's 1960 gritty crime film, Rocco and His Brothers starring Alain Delon and Annie Girardot.

The Italian Film Festival is on July 7-16 at Rialto Cinema. For dates, bookings, tickets and information visit www.cinemaitalianonz.com