All wrapped up with the Lady Gaga starrer ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’, Tunisian gem ‘Aïcha’ by Mehdi Barsaoui and ‘Wolfs’ starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt — talk about a festival for the stars!

You’ve seen all the trades by now, and they’ve told you the line up of the upcoming Venezia 81 in deep and unfaltering details.

But I’m here to tell you that the heart and soul of the festival this year belongs to a sense of renewal, after a year in 2023 when almost zero Hollywood stars and even less American filmmakers were able to attend because of the Strikes. Yes, with a capital “S”.

Introductions by the leaders of La Biennale

Sicilian born journalist turned La Biennale President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco kicked off the announcement by calling the Venice Film Festival, “the most important film festival in the world,” a quote he admitted was written in 1932, the year the first edition of the festival took place, by Francesco Pasinetti. The Italian film director and screenwriter known largely for his documentaries has a screening room dedicated to his name at the Venice Film Festival and his quote was in reference to the fact that La Biennale, in all its grandness of offering — art, dance, theater and music, along with the 7th Art — hosts the festival, thus making it the greatest in the world. That’s still true today of course.

Buttafuoco, before passing the stage over to Alberto Barbera, the artistic director of the Venice International Film Festival also added that it is a “privilege for the products of the cinema industry to qualify as art,” and concluded that, because of its strategic location, throughout the ages, “Venice has been able to dialogue with the world and the most faraway lands.”

Barbera came on and admitted what a privilege is has been to “work in absolute freedom,” in deciding this latest line up and although the trade media had spoiled most of the surprises by revealing the contenders for this year’s festival, there were still a few revelations to come. He was right, there were.

“After 9 months of work, hard, continued and constant, the films selected are like children,” Barbera said, apologizing in advance for the lengthy press conference, which lasted around 100 minutes, almost like a feature-length film!  

Dual visions in Venice — seeing both sides of the coin

There is a thread that runs through the line up, where films seem to bookend each other, like a Palestinian auteur with an Israeli citizenship, Scandar Copti with Happy Holidays in Orizzonti, having his film participate in the same festival as an Israeli Maestro — Amos Gitai who brings Why War — whose soul has always been in part Arab.

Meeting in the middle of that, is a documentary by the Swedish documentarian Göran Hugo Olsson titled Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989, a kind of Middle East reinvention of his popular 2011 doc The Black Power Mixtape, once again using archival footage from Swedish TV, known for its pragmatic objectiveness, to make up a 202 minute-long look at the Region, in turmoil since the beginning of time. But portrayed on the big screen by Olsson from the late ‘50s to 1989.

There are also a lot of duos this year, from the Sicilian filmmakers Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza with their Competition title Iddu, to real life sisters Delphine and Muriel Coulin with the French Competition title The Quiet Son (‘Jouer avec le feu’ in French, which translates literally to “playing with fire”) but also the French twin brothers Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma with their Competition title And Their Children After Them. Along with a few more.

And then films that view the Russia/Ukraine conflict from each side of the border — the politically “correct” side, as Alberto Barbera pointed out during the press conference, but also the Russian side. They are, respectively, Songs of Slow Burning Earth by Olha Zhurba, a documentary filmed in Ukraine during the conflict; and Russians at War by Anastasia Trofimova, a Russian filmmaker who managed to get herself to the front lines of the conflict and embedded herself into the medics and paramedics units there, providing some of the very few images from the Russian side. These last two titles are part of the Venice Out of Competition Non-Fiction selections.

Short on time, long in meaning

Once again, world cinema auteurs and artists will bring short films to the shores of the Lido, like Nicolas Winding Refn’s Beauty is not a Sin, a 7 minutes work that proves that you can make great cinema with a commercial. It will be screened before his 1998 film Pusher, in a new restored copy, as part of the Lifetime homage to the Danish filmmaker in Venice.

Another short with a long pedigree is the Alice Rohrwacher and JR collaboration, the 21-minutes Allégorie citadine (Urban Allegory) starring Lyna Khoudri and Leos Carax. Yes, that Leos Carax who, for someone who admits he doesn’t like to reveal too much of himself has certainly been in the public’s eye a lot since the spring of this year. First at Qumra, in Doha, then in Cannes with C’est pas moi and now here, as an “actor”? Also long in meaning, the film reimagines “Plato's allegory of the cave” which is an allegory presented by the Greek philosopher in his work Republic to compare "the effect of education and the lack of it on our nature". It is written as a dialogue between Plato's brother Glaucon and his mentor Socrates and is narrated by the latter. I wonder which part Carax will play.

Last but not least of the shorts is Marco Bellocchio’s Se posso permettermi Capitolo II (the second chapter of what roughly translates to “if I may”), a 20 minutes film made during his annual Bobbio Film Festival, something which is his own pride and joy. This short was made with the students who work with him there and enlisted the help of all the Italian thespians attending.  

‘Maria’, ‘Queer’ and ‘Joker’ among others…

Among the feature films I’ve earmarked with ten stars and a lot of exclamation points on my list are Pablo Larraín’s Maria, starring Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas at the end of her days in Paris, and featuring Italian stars Pierfrancesco Favino and Alba Rohrwacher as the Italian servants who were with her till the end in her Georges Mandel apartment. There is also The Room Next Door by Pedro Almodovár, starring Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore and John Turturro. This marks the Spanish auteur’s first English language film and was shot in NYC. Barbera admitted the film was “edited in a hurry,” to be in Venice and added “so great thanks to Pedro!” I second that feeling.

Queer by Luca Guadagnino is on everyone’s radar and in Competition in Venice. The film, which has long been one of Guadagnino’s dream projects, is based on the eponymous personal short novel by American writer and artist William S. Burroughs, originally written in 1952 but not published till 1985. Well, that tells me all I need to know and the film stars Daniel Craig and Jason Schwartzman, and was filmed entirely in Cinecittà, which doubled as Mexico in the 1950’s. Craig has already tackled a gay character in Knives Out: Glass Onion, where he played Benoit Blanc with style, so this will be a treat I feel.

Also in Competition is Iddu (Sicilian Letters) by the Sicilian duo of Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza, starring Toni Servillo and Elio Germano. The film deals with Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro, also known as “Diabolik” who was finally found in 2023 and died a few months later at the age of 61 from cancer.

The Order directed by Justin Kurzel, an Australian filmmaker working in the US, stars Jude Law and Tye Sheridan. The film is based on the 1989 non-fiction book The Silent Brotherhood by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, about the white supremacist group The Order that was active in the United States in the 1980s. The film is also in the Venezia 81 Competition.

Joker: Folie à Deux proves director “Todd Phillips as one of the most exciting filmmakers around,” as Barbera stated earlier today. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix along with Lady Gaga and Catherine Keener and takes place inside the mental institution where Joker was incarcerated after his multiple homicide conviction — following what we know from the end of the 2019 film Joker, also directed by Phillips.

Diva Futura, directed by Giulia Louise Steigerwalt and in Competition, starring Pietro Castellito recounts the infamous story of Riccardo Schicchi who is the man responsible for the birth of porno cinema in Italy. He discovered porno stars Cicciolina and Éva Henger, the latter was also his wife until his death in 2012.

Conspicuously absent from the line up is Julian Schnabel’s Hand of Dante, starring Oscar Isaac, a blond Gerard Butler and Martin Scorsese as Dante — along with an all star cast. The film still mentions an August release in Italy on its IMDb page, but perhaps will be announced as an addition later on. Fingers crossed!

Reality, according to the greats

In the Out of Competition Non Fiction section there is a doc titled One To One: John & Yoko by Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards. Macdonald is best known for The Last King of Scotland, the 2006 film, but also the 2021 title The Mauritanian. His docs include Whitney (2018) and the Bob Marley doc Marley (2012) — but also my fave doc in recent times, last year’s High & Low: John Galliano, on the disgraced, off and on again fashion figure. This latest, on the iconic music couple is built from audio and video archival content, providing a testament to the mood and politics of the USA during those years.

In the same section 2073 by UK filmmaker Asif Kapadia and featuring Samantha Morton offers a window on where the world will be in 50 years, framing it in a dystopia sci fi frame. “Not a happy film,” as Barbera added and we can imagine. We are destroying our planet, one inconsiderate step at a time. And we are all, each and every one of us, responsible. Once again, seen next to the above title, these are two films that perfectly bookend each other — one from fifty years ago, one looking into the future, fifty years from now.

Why War by Amos Gitai, made Barbera wonder, aloud, “where to place” this film, which in his words “could go in both, mixes both languages,” of narrative and documentary, as Gitai often does. The film “comes out following an exchange of letters between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, which defined the modern discourse on mass human violence that occurs in the name of religion, race and nationality,” as a press release by the filmmaker reads. I can’t wait to watch the Maestro’s latest masterpiece, once again a cautionary tale to humanity.

Series anyone?

Disclaimer by Alfonso Cuarón is a gripping psychological thriller in seven chapters starring Academy Award winners Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline. I’ll watch anything Cuarón touches and when you add in Blanchett and Kline, as well as a story centered around a woman journalist, Blanchett, this is the event of the festival for me.

The series will be screened in full at the festival, part of a section called Out of Competition Series, included in what Barbera and his team observed as the “transformation that cinema is experiencing, with shorter films featured on social media, while auteurs experiment with the longer format of the series.” The titles in this section include four great examples, which Barbera said could be seen as “very very long films,” and will prove “a commitment for those viewing them in the festival.”

The section also includes the 7 episodes of Families Like Ours by Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg, offering a dystopian view of the future of Denmark. And M: Il figlio del secolo directed by Joe Wright and based on the 2018 historical novel by Antonio Scurati. The series stars Luca Marinelli and the English filmmaker will tell the story of Italy from Benito Mussolini’s political inception to the fascist involvement in the murder of politician, journalist and anti-fascist figure Giacomo Matteotti.

Orizzonti — horizons ahead!

Last but not least, a few familiar names in the Orizzonti section, including a project near and dear to my heart, Aïcha by Tunisian helmer Mehdi Barsaoui whose Un Fils was in Venice in 2019. I press mentored this latest project, starring the wondrous Fatma Sfar in the title role, in Doha during their annual Qumra industry incubator and once again, fell in love with Barsaoui’s special brand of filmmaking. He knows how to portray women on the big screen, how to get all our innermost feelings and anxieties out in the open, without making us feel naked in the process. His films hold a special place in my heart and Aicha is no exception.

Happy Holidays by Scandar Copti deals with an Arab family living in Israel, and highlights a conflict between two cultures forced to live side by side. Copti is the Oscar nominated co-filmmaker of the 2009 title Ajami, along with Israeli filmmaker Yaron Shani.

Mistress Dispeller by Elizabeth Lo features the story of scorned wives who hire a professional woman to help them get rid of the husbands’ lovers, by convincing them to leave their husbands. A story which could “only come from China,” as Barbera said — but I paraphrase as I was too busy writing the title correctly.

Pavement by American filmmaker Alex Ross Perry is about the eponymous American indie rock band that formed in Stockton, California, in 1989 and stars Jason Schwartzman along with Michael Esper. Barbera expects the members of the original band, currently on tour, to attend the red carpet premiere of the film.

And last but not least, the opening film of the Orizzonti Extra section, September 5, featuring Peter Sarsgaard and Ben Chaplin and directed by Tim Fehlbaum. The film is based on real events, in which a team of television sports journalists found themselves reporting on the terrorist attack taking place at the 1972 Munich Olympics. We know the story, courtesy of Steven Spielberg, from the athletes and their saviors POV, but now it’s time to hear what the media had to say.

Last but not least, the Venezia 81 poster

Earlier this week it was announced that the Italian illustrator and artist Lorenzo Mattotti was picked, for the seventh consecutive year, as the creative designer of the image for the official poster, which depicts an Elephant in the Laguna. And for the sixth year, he is also responsible for the opening sequence for the Venice International Film Festival of La Biennale di Venezia, this year in its 81st edition and running from August 28th to September 7th, 2024. Mattotti explained that the elephant is a throwback to when an actual one participated in the 1981 Carnival celebrations and also that “this specially-colored Elephant also reminds us of the Exotic, the Faraway, the East, a look towards other civilizations, other cultures...”

But to me, it is an obvious reference to the American idiom ‘there is an elephant in the room” and that massive presence is the inability to discuss openly the bilateral faults in each of the conflicts that are engulfing the world at this time. In the western world, all mention of Ukraine as partly at fault for that conflict has been suppressed by silencing the other side, RT news and any mention of Russia, and its wondrous filmmakers in festivals. As far as the Middle East, most film festivals this year have avoided the subject altogether by avoiding films from the region and financing organizations cut back on their involvement in Israeli and Palestinian cinema. But finally, on the Lido, the elephant(s) in the room will be addressed. And we’ll be able to talk about each side as contributors, all responsible and all innocent, as is often the case.

Because if cinema taught us anything it is that villains and heroes live in varied shades of grey, and don’t simply exist in black and white.

See you on the Lido. Check out La Biennale Cinema website for more info.