VENICE, Italy – Ben Affleck brought Boston to Venice on Wednesday, presenting a reality-driven heist film “The Town” that is destined to draw comparisons to his other films also set in his Massachusetts hometown.

Affleck also stars in the film, which is having its world premiere out of competition at the Venice Film Festival on the lagoon city’s Lido.

Boston was also the setting for Affleck’s Oscar-winning “Good Will Hunting,” which he co-wrote and starred in, and “Gone Baby Gone,” also written and directed by Affleck and starring his younger brother Casey.

“I didn’t want to get pigeonholed as the Boston director guy,” Affleck told reporters at a packed news conference.

Still, the 38-year-old actor/director acknowledged that his deep understanding of the city helped him create the style he aspired to and which persuaded him to forge ahead with his latest project.

The plot involves a gang of bank robbers from the Boston neighborhood of Charleston, notorious for producing more bank and armored car robbers than anywhere else in the United States.

“The social realism aspect of it was really important to me,” he said. “I don’t think you can like a movie like this or believe a movie like this unless you have a strong sense of place and really believe that the characters are from there and what you see is really happening.”

Affleck cited Warner’s Bros. classic gangster films as well as the more recent Italian film “Gomorrah,” directed by Matteo Garrone about the Neapolitan Camorra crime gang, as inspiring his work on “The Town.”

Gomorrah “was a big influence on me in that sense you felt that it was real. I had never been there before but you felt like he really got it right,” he said.

Affleck said the use of security camera footage was another way to give audiences a real experience.

“I wanted to show (the robberies) as we see them in real life,” he said. “(We) are accustomed to seeing robberies and violence in 15 frames-per-second, black-and-white material we see on YouTube or the nightly news of someone breaking in, with no sound, and breaking some glass and even maybe shooting.”

The film opens with a terrifying heist by masked robbers that finishes with the kidnapping of the bank’s director, Claire, played by Rebecca Hall. Before freeing her, the gang took her driver’s license, leaving her with fears they might come back for her.

Two of the robbers, loose cannon Jem (Jeremy Renner) and the steadier Doug MacRay (Affleck) are concerned she might have evidence to turn over to the FBI.

In order to find out, Doug stages a casual encounter at a laundry where he engages Claire in conversation and invites her on a date.

Eventually Claire confides that she recognized one of the robber’s tattoos but hadn’t told the FBI special agent (Jon Hamm) trailing the gang. At this point, Doug is in an increasingly volatile situation, up against his fellow robbers, particularly Jem and the mafia boss threats of Fergie, played by Oscar winner Pete Postlethwaite.

So far, the film is a high point for the Venice film festival, which has had less star power this year than in previous events.

Renner was on the Lido last year with director Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar winner “The Hurt Locker” but shrugged off comparisons between the full-throttle characters he played in each film.

“Nothing from ‘Hurt Locker’ rolls into this,” Renner told reporters.

Hall’s career bolted upward with her starring role in Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”

The festival’s top Golden Lion award will be handed out at its closing ceremony on Saturday.

BERLIN (AFP) – Italian-American actress and director Isabella Rossellini will head the international jury at the 61st Berlin Film Festival from February 10-20, organisers said on Monday.

“It’s fantastic that Isabella Rossellini will be the president of the Berlinale Jury in 2011,” said festival director Dieter Kosslick. “She is a multifaceted, creative film artist with extensive experience in European, American and international cinema.”

Rossellini, 58, the daughter of “Casablanca” star Ingrid Bergman and Italian director Roberto Rossellini, first won fame for her roles in ex-partner David Lynch’s films “Blue Velvet” (1986) and “Wild at Heart” (1990).

In recent years she has become a regular at the Berlin film festival, known as the Berlinale, presenting there in 2008 her directorial debut “Green Porno” about the sexual behaviour of animals including earthworms and snails.

Last year the jury choosing the winners of the Berlin festival’s Golden and Silver Bear prizes was headed by Oscar-nominated German director Werner Herzog.

Rossellini stars in Saverio Constanzo’s “La Solitudine dei Numeri Primi” (“The Solitude of Prime Numbers”), an adaptation of Paolo Giordano’s novel of the same name, screening at the Venice film festival, which starts Wednesday.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Hollywood star Angelina Jolie said after a visit to Sarajevo Saturday she would soon start work on a love story set during the 1992-95 Bosnian War.

Jolie said in a statement issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), for whom she is a Goodwill Ambassador, that shooting for the movie would begin in autumn on the tale of a couple who meet on the eve of the war and the effect it has on their relationship.

“The film is a love story, not a political statement,” the statement said.

Jolie arrived Friday for a surprise visit to Sarajevo and Saturday met members of Bosnia’s inter-ethnic presidency to discuss ways to help thousands of returning war refugees.

Jolie visited returnees in eastern Bosnia in April with her partner Brad Pitt and promised then to come back.

She also said the movie’s cast would be comprised of actors from the various ethnicities of the former Yugoslavia.

“I would like to involve as many local people as possible and learn as much as I can,” Jolie said.

(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

MADRID (AFP) – US actress Julia Roberts, star of Hollywood blockbusters, will receive an award for her movie career at next month’s film festival in San Sebastian in northern Spain, organisers said Saturday.

Roberts will also attend the film fest to promote her latest movie “Eat Pray Love” by US director Ryan Murphy and co-starring Spanish actor Javier Bardem, which is an official entry in the competition.

“Eat Pray Love”, based on a novel of that name by Elizabeth Gilbert, is the story of a recent divorcee, played by Roberts, who travels to Italy, India and Bali, rediscovering through each place her inner peace.

The 42-year-old Roberts came to fame for her role in the 1990 movie “Pretty Woman” and spent a decade becoming one of Hollywood’s favourite box office draws and highest paid actresses.

She won an Oscar for best actress in 2001 for “Erin Brockovich”.

In recent years she has taken some time off from acting to get married and give birth to three children.

She will receive the award for her film career on September 20.

Previous winners since 1987 have included British actor Sir Ian McKellen, US actors Glenn Ford and Bette Davis, and US directors Francis Ford Coppola and Woody Allen.

The San Sebastian International Film Festival runs from September 17 to 25.