Rome Film Festival To Honor Johnny Depp

The Rome Film Festival will honor Johnny Depp with a lifetime achievement award and screen “Modi – Three Days on the Wing of Madness,” a movie Depp directed.

During a news conference on Tuesday at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain, Depp seemed to reference his court battles with ex-wife Amber Heard and compared his life to a soap opera.

“I think we’ve all been through a number of things, ultimately… Maybe yours didn’t turn into a soap opera, televised in fact, but we all experience and go through what we go through,” Depp said, according to Variety.

In 2018, Depp sued a tabloid for libel after it referred to him as a “wife beater.” Both Depp and Heard testified in the trial and the judge found that the characterization of Depp was “substantially true.”

In 2019, Depp sued Heard for defamation after she wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post in which she referred to herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse” but did not name Depp. A jury found that Heard had defamed her former husband with actual malice.

Some people expressed disgust on social media at the Rome festival’s decision to honor Depp, given the alleged abuse. However, Depp was applauded at his film’s premiere at the San Sebastian festival on Tuesday.

“Modi – Three Days on the Wing of Madness,” is a biopic about the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani, and is the first film Depp has directed since 1997′s “The Brave.”

Depp’s film will also screen at the Rome Film Festival, which runs from Oct. 16 to 27. The festival did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.