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Italian genre specialist Stefano Sollima – who is known in Hollywood for “Sicario: Day of the Soldado,” “Without Remorse” and the TV series “Gomorrah” – is in the Venice competition for the first time with Rome-set crime drama “Adagio.”

This beautifully shot picture features an ensemble cast of Italian A-listers comprising Pierfrancesco Favino (“Nostalgia”), Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”), Valerio Mastandrea (“Perfect Strangers”) and Adriano Giannini (“The Ties”). It’s the tale of three old – and once mighty – mobsters searching for redemption in a cutthroat contemporary Rome that is literally burning. They find it in the form of a 16 year old named Manuel who is being blackmailed after venturing too deep in a rotting Roman underworld world that he doesn’t understand.

You often work from books such as “Gomorrah” but this is your original idea. How did it germinate?

“Adagio” – this is no secret – is a gift that I made to myself.

Night time in Rome. Wildfires rage on the horizon of the vast city. A blackout strikes, and block by block, the urban landscape is plunged suddenly into darkness, illuminated only by traffic and the roaring blaze in the distance. When a city’s infrastructure fails, it feels like the visible, outward sign of dysfunction or rot. What better way to plunge the audience into “Adagio,” Stefano Sollima’s crime drama dealing with cynicism and corruption, and the repercussions of past actions, as they echo through the generations? Premiering in Competition at Venice, this is a solidly assembled yarn about the on-the-ground consequences of a moral breakdown at the heart of the state, about fiddling the books while Rome burns.

The notional protagonist is 16-year old Manuel (newcomer Gianmarco Franchini), in over his head in a world he doesn’t understand. But he’s a protagonist almost entirely moved and motivated...