Guide to the Venice Film Festival – Il Post

The 79th edition of the Venice Film Festival begins on Wednesday, and after two years it is back to unfold without restrictions and with the theaters once again at full capacity. This edition falls ninety years after the first, which took place at the Hotel Excelsior del Lido from 6 to 21 August 1932. The center of the exhibition is still there, between the Palazzo del Cinema, with the main rooms and the outdoor area of ​​the red carpet, and the Palazzo del Casino, as well as the various branch offices on the Lido, Venice and the islands of the lagoon. The winners will be announced in the closing ceremony on Saturday 10 September.

There are 68 films in programming, 23 of which are in competition for the main prizes: the Golden Lion for best film, the Silver Lions given to the best director and as a jury prize, the Volpi cups for the best male and female interpretations. , and the Special Jury Prize. Eighteen films will instead be in the Horizons section, a category that rewards “films representing new trends”, which will include Penelope Cruz, winner of the Coppa Volpi last year, with the film. En los márgenes, and Isabelle Huppert, who stars in The syndicalist.

The jury, chaired by American actress Julianne Moore, will be composed of Argentine director Mariano Cohn, Iranian actress Leila Hatami, directors Leonardo Di Costanzo, Rodrigo Sorogoyen and Audrey Diwan – winner of the last Golden Lion with L’Événement– and by the British writer of Japanese origin Kazuo Ishiguro, Nobel Prize for literature in 2017.

Among the films in competition, White noise (White Noise) by Noah Baumbach, with Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, will open the festival on August 31 and will then be distributed by Netflix by the end of the year. The lord of the ants by Gianni Amelio, with Luigi Lo Cascio and Elio Germano, reconstructs the controversial trial for plagiarism against the Italian poet Aldo Braibanti at the end of the 1960s. Blonde by Andrew Dominik, another Netflix production, is based on the novel by Joyce Carol Oates and traces the life of Marilyn Monroe, played by Ana de Armas.

Darren Aronosfky returns to Venice after five years with The Whale, in which Brendan Fraser plays an English teacher suffering from severe obesity. After the great successes obtained between 2014 and 2015, the Mexican director Alejandro Iñárritu also returns, with a Hispanic production: Bard (full title Bardo, false chronicle of unas cuantas verdades), on which he worked for five years.

Florian Zeller, French director Oscar winner for best screenplay with The Fatherwill be in competition with The Sona family drama starring Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby and Anthony Hopkins (who also starred in The Father). In TárTodd Field’s third film, Cate Blanchett plays the first female conductor of one of the most important German symphony orchestras; The Banshees of Inisherin instead it tells the end of the friendship between two men – Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson – on a remote island off the Irish coast.

Cate Blanchett, president of the jury in 2020 (Vittorio Zunino Celotto / Getty Images)

In addition to Gianni Amelio, the Italian directors in competition will be four. Luca Guadagnino with Bones and All, starring Timothée Chalamet, Mark Rylance and Chloë Sevigny; Emanuele Crialese with The immensity, Penelope Cruz’s second film in this edition; Andrea Pallaoro with Monica and Susanna Nicchiarelli with Clear.

The films in competition conclude Athena by Romain Gavras, The Eternal Daughter by Joanna Hogg, with Tilda Swinton, the documentary on the life of American photographer Nan Goldin All the Beauty and the Bloodshedand then Argentina, 1985 on the story of the prosecutors who investigated the crimes committed by the Argentine military dictatorship, A couple by Frederick Wiseman, French productions Les enfants des autres, Les miens And Saint Omerby newcomer Alice Diop, and two Iranian films: Bears don’t exist by Jafar Panahi, arrested and sentenced last July for propaganda against the regime, e Beyond the wall by Vahid Jalilvand.

Timothée Chalamet and Denis Villeneuve arrive in Venice for the premiere of Dune in 2021 (Marc Piasecki / Getty Images)

Ten films will then be presented out of competition, including Don’t Worry Darling by Olivia Wilde, with Florence Pugh and Harry Styles; The call of heavenposthumous film by South Korean director Kim Ki-duk, Golden Lion in 2012 who died two years ago; Drought by Paolo Virzì e Dead For a Dollar by Walter Hill, an eighty-year-old director already awarded the Cartier Glory for his contribution to contemporary cinema.

Out of competition there will also be the two television series by Lars von Trier and Nicolas Winding Refn, Riget Exodus And Copenhagen Cowboyand nine documentaries, including the one on the travels of Pope Francis, by Gianfranco Rosi, the one on nuclear energy by Oliver Stone, two on Ukraine and The last days of humanity by Enrico Ghezzi, creator of the television program Blob.

Finally, there are other secondary categories, out of competition or parts of parallel autonomous sections, such as Venezia Classici and Venice Immersive, which on the Isola del Lazzaretto vecchio offers works in augmented reality. Within the International Critics ‘Week and the Authors’ Days will be screened Father Pio by Abel Ferrara, in which Shia LaBeouf plays, e The Listenera film by Steve Buscemi that will close the program of the festival.

– Read also: This year at the Venice Biennale