The oldest and most glamorous film festival in the world – with permission from Cannes – is now 80 years old. And it does so under the threat of rain - there was no truce yesterday - and within the framework of the double strike of Hollywood scriptwriters and actors, with the appearance of overshadowing the traditional red carpet spectacle. The rules of the actors union SAG-Aftra prevent actors from not only continuing to work in films, but also from promoting them.
The projection of Rivales, the romantic drama set in the world of tennis directed by Luca Guadagnino that was announced as the opening film, finally postponed its premiere to 2024 and left the Mostra without the presence of its protagonist, the charismatic Zendaya. Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo are also not expected to head the cast of Poor Creatures, a surreal Frankenstein-inspired period drama with which Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos is competing for the Golden Lion five years after The Favourite.
At this point it is unknown if Carey Mulligan, Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bradley Cooper or Penelope Cruz will be coming. The Spanish has a competition film, Ferrari, the new work by Michael Mann in which she plays Laura Ferrari, a role for which she aspires to win the Volpi Cup again, which she already achieved in 2021 for Parallel Mothers. She has confirmed Adam Driver, her husband in fiction as the legendary racing driver Enzo Ferrari. The film, which explores the tumultuous marriage while dealing with the death of his son, is Mann's first feature film since 2015, the year Blackhat was released, the biggest fiasco of his career.
Another guaranteed presence at the last minute is that of Jessica Chastain, who will defend Memory, a web of incapacities and sentimental shadows in New York directed by the Mexican Michel Franco. Both the red-haired actress and the interpreter of Kylo Ren in the Star Wars saga have participated in independent productions that are not affiliated with the American Alliance of Film and Television Producers (AMPTP) and have the approval of the union to be able to promote their films. The Danish Mads Mikkelsen will also be seen in these parts, who will attend with The Promised Land, by Nikolaj Arcel; Caleb Landry Jones, star of Dogman, directed by Luc Besson, and Cailee Spaeny alongside Jacob Elordi, Priscilla and Elvis Presley in Sofia Coppola's long-awaited Priscilla.
Another renowned actor, Kiefer Sutherland, will present out of competition The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, a posthumous film by William Friedkin, who died on August 7. Somehow, the presence of these interpreters, even if they are few, will serve as a loudspeaker for the demands of their colleagues. The official competition section, with 23 productions, will kick off today with Commander, by Italian Edoardo De Angelis, about an Italian commander who after sinking an enemy ship in World War II decided to rescue his crew.
In recent years, the Venice Film Festival has become the main launching pad for American productions with Oscar aspirations. In this edition, the festival will feature several of the most anticipated titles of the season, from the aforementioned Priscilla and Ferrari to three Netflix productions: Maestro, the biopic about Leonard Bernstein directed and starring Bradley Cooper; the thriller The Killer, David Fincher's adaptation of the comic by Luc Jacamon and Matz and the out-of-competition medium-length film The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, in which Wes Anderson adapts a collection of Roald Dahl stories.
New works by Pablo Larraín (The Count), Matteo Garrone (Io Capitano), Pietro Castellitto (Enea), Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Evil Does Not Exist) and Saverio Costanzo (Finally L'Alba) will also compete for the coveted Golden Lion. As announced by the director of the Mostra, Alberto Barbera, this year's programming includes 30% of films directed by women, including shorts and feature films. In addition to Coppola, the veteran Agnieszka Holland will seek recognition from the Italian festival with Green Border, the Belgian Fien Troch will do so with Holly and Ava Duvernay has made history as the first African-American woman to be selected for the Mostra competition. The director of Selma (2014) will bring Origin, which narrates the life and work of the writer Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
If last year it was precisely a woman, the American Laura Poitras, who won the Golden Lion with her documentary Beauty and Pain, this time Poitras will be part of the jury led by director Damien Chazelle. Among the first-rate names are the controversial Woody Allen and Roman Polanski, who carry accusations of sexual abuse and will show their new tapes out of competition.
The New Yorker will land on the Lido with a romantic thriller entitled Stroke of Luck and Polanski, at 90, will do the same with The Palace, a black comedy set in a hotel in the tourist center of Gstaad in the Swiss Alps. And Venice will be the showcase for Hitman, the long-awaited new creation by Texan Richard Linklater, who tells us about a psychologist who works undercover for the police.
Despite the fact that the presence of Spanish cinema will be scarce and there will be no national production in the official competition section. Juan Antonio Bayona will be the great standard-bearer with the closing film, The Snow Society, which tells the story of the survivors of the plane crash in the Andes in 1972. After Venice, the author of The Impossible will travel to San Sebastián with this emotional story produced by Netflix and based on the book of the same name by Pablo Vierci.
In the Jornadas de los Autores, a parallel and independent contest of the Mostra, the Basque Víctor Uriarte will debut with Sobre todo de noche, a thriller with Lola Dueñas and Ana Torrent in which the paths of three characters cross: a mother, a son and a foster mother. The granddaughter of the poet Rafael Alberti and the writer María Teresa León, Marina Alberti, will be in Horizontes –the second most important section– with the short Aitana, focused on the memories of her mother, embedded in the memory of the country and of a whole century .
In addition to the presence on the big screen of Penélope Cruz, the multifaceted Jordi Mollá completes the Spanish representation in Venice with two films: an experimental project out of competition titled Aggro Dr1ft and directed by Harmony Korine and, in the parallel section Horizontes Extra, Pet Shop Days, by Olmo Schnabel.
