ROME, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- The 14th edition of the Rome Film Festival kicked off Thursday with a screening of "Motherless Brooklyn," a U.S. crime drama film directed by award-winning actor Edward Norton, and a talk by U.S. producer Ethan Coen.

The film "Motherless Brooklyn," based on the 1999 novel of the same name, stars Edward Norton as a private investigator affected by Tourette syndrome, who struggles to use his unerring photographic memory to unravel the mystery of his mentor's demise during the 1950s in New York City.

The film, with gorgeous cinematography from award-winning British director Dick Pope and an original song written and performed by British musician Thom Yorke, is about family, community, corruption, and the gritty underbelly of a city in full expansion during the post-World War II economic boom.

It had its world premiere at the U.S. Telluride Film Festival on Aug. 30, and is scheduled to be released in North America on Nov. 1 by Warner Bros. Pictures.

"It is all the things I love put in a blender, which is kind of risky -- pooling my love of Thom Yorke and his unique sense as a songwriter and a modern composer of dissonant music with classic jazz from that era (the 1950s)," Norton, who has three Oscar nominations and made his directorial debut in 2000, said at a press conference after the screening.

Talking about his sticking to "Motherless Brooklyn" as the second effort as a writer and director, Norton said "I saw a good role for myself, and there aren't that many, so I kept at it."

"There are so many things that are wonderful and also dysfunctional about it -- I liked the idea of digging into that," said Norton, who lived in New York for 30 years.

Sixty-two-year-old U.S. producer and writer Ethan Coen, works together with his brother Joel, spoke on the first day of the festival.

The Coen brothers made their debut film Blood Simple in 1984, and have won a number of awards, including an Academy Award for "Fargo" (1996) and three more for "No Country for Old Men" (2007).

Ethan's talk focused on surgery in films, and featured seven clips from movies ranging from the 1940s to the mid-2000s.

He said that he picked the topic because it is "an interesting plot device" that allowed filmmakers to explore themes of identity in ways that are both "preposterous (and) serious," for example in movies where characters change their identities through plastic surgery.

"The whole idea of identity and being able to change it -- there's something narratively fantastic about it," he said.