Rome warms up for its first major movie festival (ANSA) - Rome, October 11 - Film star Sean Connery arrived in Rome on Wednesday as the city geared up for its first ever international movie fest . The 76-year-old actor, who is to receive the festival's inaugural career achievement award, told reporters awaiting him at Rome's Ciampino airport that he was "happy, very happy" to be here . He was then whisked away with his wife, French painter Micheline Roquebrune Connery, to a top hotel in the city centre. The Scottish-born star will receive the festival's golden Marco Aurelio prize on Thursday evening . The prize has been designed by Italian jewellers Bulgari based on Rome's famed equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius .

Sean and his wife Micheline

The festival, which kicks off on Friday, will include a retrospective of Connery's films, starting with his 1965 movie The Hill .

Although in its first year, the event has succeeded in luring a host of Hollywood big names to flank Connery, including Nicole Kidman, Robert De Niro, Richard Gere, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese, Harrison Ford, Daniel Auteuil and Monica Bellucci .

Kidman has been signed up to open the event with the world premiere of her film Fur based on the life of photographer Diane Arbus and directed by Steven Shainberg .

Other major premieres include Scorsese's The Departed, a remake of a Hong Kong crime thriller with Jack Nicholson, DiCaprio and Matt Damon; the noirish La Sconosciuta (The Stranger) by Italian Oscar-winner Giuseppe Tornatore; and The Namesake, a tale of immigration by internationally feted Indian director Mira Nair .

A total of 16 movies will be vying for the event's top award .

The line-up highlights the fest's international flavour with the inclusion of several Asian features together with pictures from Argentina, Iran, Turkey, Russia, Georgia and Belgium .

Three Italian films have been selected: Francesca Comencini's money-themed A Casa Nostra (Our Home), Alessandro Angelini's father-son drama L'Aria Salata' (Salt Air), and La Strada di Levi (Primo Levi's Journey), a documentary by Davide Ferrario retracing the journey taken by Italian writer Levi after his release from a Nazi death camp .

Gardens in Autumn by veteran Georgian Otar Iosseliani is in the race, together with The Legacy, a follow-up to the award-winning gritty thriller Tzameti (13) by young fellow Georgian Gela Babluani, and Izobrazhaya Zhertvu (Playing the Victim), a dark comedy by Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov .

Turkey's Reha Erdem is competing with Bes Vakit (Times And Winds), a film about three children growing up in a small Turkish village, while British director Shane Meadows is present with This Is England, a drama about English skinheads set in the 1980s .

The Asian crop includes Chinese filmmaker Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Go Master; Hong Kong director Patrick Tam's After This Our Exile; and Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto's Nightmare Detective .

The winning film in the October 13-21 festival will be chosen by a jury of 50 ordinary cinema goers who have been picked from hundreds of applicants .