VENICE, Italy – The world’s oldest running film festival, the Venice Biennale, is used to imitators. But this year, the upstarts are just a little too close to home.

The city of Rome’s decision to launch a festival of its own just two months after the venerable Venice Film Festival, which opens its 63rd showing on Wednesday, has erupted into a full-blown spat that mirrors centuries-old rivalries between the Eternal City and the Most Splendid Republic.

A gentlemanly truce broke this week when the director of the Venice Film Festival gave an interview saying that the nascent Rome festival was performing a service to films overlooked by Venice and Cannes by giving them a venue.

By the time the comment reached the ears of the Rome festival directors, the Rome lineup had become “leftovers” – to the ire of the founders of the new festival.

They called the alleged comment “an incredible offense to the filmmakers who are showing their work in Rome.”

The Venice Film Festival issued a statement denying that their director had ever used a word as offensive as “leftovers.” But the fact remained: The films being shown at Rome “are films that neither we nor Cannes wanted.”

Take that, Nicole Kidman, who opens the Rome festival on Oct. 16 with the world premier of “Fur,” a film combining fictional romance and biography based loosely on the life of photographer Diane Arbus.

There were early signs that the Rome festival was causing strains in the lagoon city. For the first time in festival history, all the films competing for the Golden Lion are world premieres. The festival opens with the Brian De Palma film “Black Dalhia,” an adaptation of James Ellroy’s novel about a Hollywood starlet’s 1947 murder. Scarlett Johansson, Josh Hartnett and Hilary Swank star.

The Venice Film Festival was the brainchild of a count who wanted to draw American visitors back to the island following the depression. He set up a projector in the gardens of the Excelsior Hotel in 1932, and the film festival was born.

Italy’s Culture Minister, former Rome Mayor Francesco Rutelli, has stepped in to calm tempers. He is not troubled by the cinematic clash.

“Two film festivals are a bounty of riches, not a problem,” he said.