Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas, photographed by Pablo Larraín, used with permission
Turns out once was not enough for the cinematic tale of Maria Callas’ last week, as told by Chilean auteur Pablo Larraín and interpreted with courage and beauty by Hollywood icon Angelina Jolie.
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Other members of the esteemed Venezia 81 jury include James Gray, Agnieszka Holland, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Giuseppe Tornatore, Julia von Heinz and Zhang Ziyi.
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Many women-directed gems were snubbed, in favor of a story about a sex worker written and directed by a male filmmaker.
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A still from ‘Salted Skins’ by Nicolas Fattouh, courtesy of the DFI
It’s all in a week’s work for the Doha Film Institute, the greatest cinematic organization in the MENA region.
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A still from ‘The Girl with the Needle’, courtesy of the Festival de Cannes
There is a trick to this festival. If you stand still long enough in Cannes — something a bit difficult to do on a weekend as crowds are bustling all around you — you’ll run into everyone who is anyone in the film universe.
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A still from Ginevra Elkann’s ‘I Told You So’ which will screen at this year’s Cinema Made in Italy
Organized by Cinecittà, the French Institute in London and The Italian Cultural Institute, this audience favorite annual film festival highlights the best Italian cinema from the past year.
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Going forward, if we’re going to learn anything about the pandemics and how to handle them, it’s going to come from New Zealand. And in the film festival world, if we’re going to find a way to move forward, it will also come from this edition of the New Zealand International Film Festival, under the direction of Marten Rabarts.
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Born out of the ashes of 9/11, one of the most catastrophic events NYC ever experienced, the annual Tribeca Film Festival is something very near and dear to my heart.
So, when they announced yesterday WE ARE ONE A Global Film Festival, joining forces with the likes of the Festival de Cannes, Venice, Berlinale, Toronto, Tokyo and San Sebastian (for the full list read here) I was over the moon.
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An empty red carpet means anticipation. No red carpet means defeat.
I wrote a letter to the Festival de Cannes. I asked it to help save cinema by not going online.
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Jack Irving in a still from Grear Patterson’s ‘Giants Being Lonely’ — photo courtesy of ROD30 productions
“If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.” — Émile Zola
I watch films to understand the world. And it seems sometimes the biggest lessons are just behind the scenes.
What I’ve learned at this year’s Venice Film Festival is that it seems that if you’re a woman journalist, you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. I’ve run the gamut from enemy of the people for publishing an interview with a man accused but never convicted of bad things, to being made to feel (by my women editors) that I don’t know how to write just so they can justify only having male writers in their roster. I also felt that a current article was unjust to the amount of women filmmakers that are actually in Venice — if the journalists who wrote it actually bothered to look at all the films, and not only the few titles in Competition — so I pointed out in another piece about a Critics’ Week title that the filmmaker was indeed a woman. And a man, I swear I can’t make this stuff up, added a comment to the FB post saying I made it sound like women filmmakers were creatures from another planet. I used the phrase “woman filmmaker” one time in the entire piece, to claim her as one of my own who makes me proud… But anyway.
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What a rollercoaster this has been.
The last couple of months feel like a dream to me. And not a good one. Anyway, cinema always puts me back together, at least films like these do. They somehow erase the cynic in me, and recharge the woman and lover who has been wronged by the world.
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Julianne Moore in ‘The Staggering Girl’ by Luca Guadagnino
There has been a certain je ne sais quoi in the air here in Cannes, and I wasn’t able to quite put my finger on it. It bothered me, someone always good at defining a moment, person or place, that I couldn’t put that feeling into words. Then I attended the press conference for Luca Guadagnino’s ‘The Staggering Girl’ and I had a ‘EUREKA!” moment. So bear with me for a moment while I get to that…
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A still from ‘The Man Who Surprised Everyone’ by Natalya Merkulova and Alexey Chupov
How would you cope with being told you have a terminal illness?
That is a question I’ve asked myself often these days, as I deal with people I love getting ill and the recent death of my father. Where do you find the strength to go on, when you know the days are numbered and how do you continue to be a functioning member of society when probably all you wish to do is go into the woods and hide?
Well, in Natalya Merkulova’s and Alexey Chupov’s haunting, beautiful and at times painfully truthful film ‘The Man Who Surprised Everyone’ which screened in the Orizzonti section in Venice, the real life husband and wife team tackle the difficult question.
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A still from 'Roma' the Venice Golden Lion winning film by Alfonso Cuarón which will be in theater and on Netflix in December 2018
This year's Venice Film Festival seemed to carry a special soundtrack, like a mixtape of our collective thoughts and hopes and wishes. For a future where we are finally able to learn from our past and stop thinking that our opinions count individually. For a world where we will discover, finally, a middle ground in shades of grey, instead of living everything in either black or white.
Here is my Venezia 75 Mixtape.
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Sawsan Arsheed in a still from Soudade Kaadan's 'The Day I Lost My Shadow'
'The Day I Lost My Shadow' by Soudade Kaadan won the Lion of the Future – “Luigi De Laurentiis” Venice Award for a Debut Film Jury at the 75th Venice Film Festival. It's a win to be celebrated for all women filmmakers, of course, but also for Syrian filmmakers who, since the start of the war in 2011 have all but disappeared. Scattered around foreign lands, their voices and visions have become the true casualties of this conflict.
In her film, which world premiered at the festival in the Orizzonti section, Kaadan uses the metaphor of personal shadows as a way to show how the war strips people of their humanity and hope. When Sana, played by the beautiful Sawsan Arsheed, goes out looking for a gas canister so she can cook for her son, she is pulled into a three day nightmare that eventually ends the way everything ends in Syria... I'll leave that to your imagination and perhaps your first viewing of the film.
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Bouli Lanners, flanked by Justine Lacroix, right and Sarah Henochsberg in Claire Burger's 'C'est ça l'amour'
Think back to the last time a film redefined love for you. That felt like a magical discovery then, didn't it? For me, cinema exists at its best when it does something that changes me -- and of course I want that change to be for the better.
In Claire Burger's touching follow up to her Cannes Camera d'Or winner 'Party Girl' -- which she co-directed with Marie Amachoukeli and Samuel Theis -- I found a new fatherhood role model. For a woman whose own father was at best unavailable throughout my teenage years and beyond, Burger's wondrous father figure Mario (played by the spellbinding Bouli Lanners) is a revelation and offers a sense of newfound hope. His quest to be a good father to the young Frida (the perfectly rebellious Justine Lacroix) and the teenage Kiki (cool and flirty Sarah Henochsberg) takes the audience on a journey of discovery along with the characters.
But 'C'est ça l'amour' is a multilayered film and so it's no surprise that, among quite a few strong and beautiful stories featured in this year's Giornate degli Autori line up, Burger's film ended up walking away with the top prize -- the GdA Director's Award.
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As we watch our nightly dose of immigration porn fed to us by the local news channels, particularly those of us who live in Europe we see row after row of young men stepping off boats and assorted vessels. We could be mistaken into thinking that they left their women safe at home, in their country of origin, the wives and girlfriends and mothers awaiting their return, as well as their paycheck. That's so far from the truth and if you ever held such a wrong opinion, 'Joy' by Sudabeh Mortezai will set you straight.
In her beautifully shot and perfectly told film premiering in the Giornate degli Autori, Venice Days sidebar at the Venice Film Festival, Mortezai shows us the complex network of Nigerian women who virtually invisibly inhabit our European streets. 'Joy' is as much about the oldest profession in the world, the prostitution networks these women get sucked into and then, once they have paid off their debts, also manage and run in Europe, as it is about womanhood itself. We follow the story of these young women from the juju ritual they are subjected to at home, in Benin City Nigeria, to the streets of Vienna where they owe their traffickers the kind of money one wouldn't spend traveling around the world for a year and staying at the best hotels.
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Vincent Lacoste and Isaure Multrier in 'Amanda' by Mikhaël Hers
I'm a sucker for a great love story. But often, the films that hit me deepest aren't filled with happily ever after endings and the perfect romance between a handsome boy and a beautiful girl. It's the redefinition of true love that gets me to my core.
In Mikhaël Hers' latest 'Amanda' which premiered in the Orizzonti section at this year's Venice Film Festival, the filmmaker reworks the idea of family and in the process, also rewrites the perfect romance. Of course Hers' film is not missing out on a handsome boy -- the charming Vincent Lacoste breaks hearts as David -- and a pretty girl -- with the striking Stacy Martin playing his love interest Léna. But at the center of 'Amanda' is the title character, a little girl played beautifully by Isaure Multrier, a child who suddenly goes from being an occasional playmate in the life of her somewhat immature uncle David, to being entrusted to him permanently.
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Judy in a still from Roberto Minervini's 'What You Gonna Do When the World's On Fire?'
Of all the films we watched at this year's Venice Film Festival Roberto Minervini's was the most important.
For two very specific reasons. One, it's a documentary, and while many narrative films did explain my own personal struggle as a modern woman in today's world, those fictional stories can be dismissed by their critics as simply made up. 'What You Gonna Do When the World's On Fire?' cannot, since it's real life, it's in your face and it's downright true.
Point number two follows closely my first point, in that while watching the press preview of Minervini's film, which premiered in Competition at the festival, I saw more of my colleagues shift in their seat and -- after what appeared like much inner debate and a prolonged anxiety -- leave the theater than ever before. The answer is not a reflection on the quality of 'What You Gonna Do...' which is visually stunning, features a terrific soundtrack and makes its two hours duration fly by in what seemed like fifteen minutes.
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The first ever Venice Film Festival was held in 1932, from the 6th to the 21st of August and it opened with 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' -- the Fredric March version. March went on to win favorite actor and since there were no official prizes, he was picked by the audience.
In that magical moment, during the first edition of the first ever world film festival our own profession -- film criticism and film writing -- was also born. There hadn't been a true need for it before, think about it.
When I come to Venice, I realize this is where it all comes from, and despite some problematic years in our history, we should remember the heritage of the Venice Film Festival. All journalists should take a moment and think about that when they first set foot on the Lido. Without Venice, we probably wouldn't be here. They started it. All.
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