Gulf News
Aug 25 2014
Venice Film Festival 2014 opens
Of the 55 films screening, 54 will be world premieres
AFP
Published: 21:00 August 25, 2014
Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on email Share on print More
Sharing Services 0
Hollywood greats Al Pacino, Ethan Hawke and Jennifer Aniston are set
to dazzle at this year’s Venice film festival, which opens on
Wednesday with tales of war and the economic crisis offset by beach
parties and gondola jaunts.
Michael Keaton, of Beetlejuice and Batman fame, will likely be the
first A-lister to zip by water taxi across the lagoon to present
Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Birdman or the
Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance.
In the first of 20 flicks vying for the coveted Golden Lion prize,
Keaton stars as a washed-up actor, once famous for playing a
superhero, who is now struggling to put on a Broadway play in a bid to
regain his former glory.
French film composer Alexandre Desplat — whose dozens of works include
the scores for The King’s Speech and Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows — will head up the main jury at the 71st edition of the
world’s oldest film festival, which runs until September 6.
Many of the 55 films screening — 54 of which are world premieres —
reflect “a moment in which the spectre of war is rising dramatically
again”, festival director Alberto Barbera said in Rome last month as
he unveiled the line-up.
War films
Among them is Good Kill by New Zealand director Andrew Niccol — who
wrote The Truman Show — in which Hawke stars as a drone operator in
Afghanistan, as well as David Oelhoffen’s Loin des hommes, in which
Lord of the Rings star Viggo Mortensen plays a teacher in the Algerian
war.
The five American films in competition include Al Pacino as an ex-con
turned locksmith in David Gordon Green’s Manglehorn, and Ramin
Bahrani’s drama 99 Homes about a father trying to recover his house
after an eviction.
France will make a strong showing with four movies running for top
prize, including Xavier Beauvois’s La Rancon de la gloire, based on a
true story about two men who plot to steal Charlie Chaplain’s coffin
in Switzerland.
For Italy, Francesco Munzi’s Anime Nere explores the Calabrian-based
mafia — cocaine traffickers with a global reach — while Saverio
Costanzo’s Brooklyn-based Hungry Hearts tackles extreme eating
disorders.
There is buzz from critics already over the only first feature
competing for the Lion, the Turkish Sivas, by Kann Mujdeci, about a
young boy who befriends a stray dog he saves.
Documentary
Joshua Oppenheimer fans will be looking forward to The Look of Silence
— in which Indonesian genocide survivors confront the killers of their
brother — the only documentary in competition and the follow-up to his
acclaimed 2012 The Act of Killing.
>From Asia, Japan’s Shinya Tuskamoto will unveil Fires on the Plane, a
jungle-based horror set at the end of World War II, while China’s
Xiaoshaui Wang is set to unnerve with a tale of stalking in Red
Amnesia.
Roy Andersson’s Swedish comedy A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on
Existence about two world-weary men on a sales trip may provide light
relief, but German-Turkish director Fatih Akin’s The Cut takes us back
to the theme of genocide, following an Armenian survivor as he
searches for his daughters.
Out of competition slots have gone to US director Peter Bogdanovich’s
She’s Funny That Way, a comedy starring Owen Wilson and Aniston, as
well as American Lisa Cholodenko’s four-part HBO series Olive
Kitteridge, starring Bill Murray.
Other hotly-awaited flicks include Barry Levinson’s The Humbling,
which stars Pacino as a suicidal actor who has an affair with a much
younger lesbian, as well as The Sound and the Fury by American
heartthrob James Franco, who will be in Venice to pick up an
innovation in cinema award.