73rd Venice Film Festival' showcases cutting edge films

By Moira Sullivan

Yolande Moreau, Judith Chemla, Jean-Pierre Daroussin - Une Vie

The 73rd Venice Film Festival will be held from Aug 31 through Sept 10, one of the oldest film festivals in the world that is a part of the famous art exhibition "La Biennale di Venezia".

The festival is renowned for its selection of international films with an artistic edge. Due to dwindling ticket sales this year the president of the festival Alberto Barbera has created a special screening venue of popular films. This puts a perplexing color on the festival that is known for cutting edge films with artistic content that general audiences seem to find difficult to navigate. They come to see the movie stars and get autographs but the prestigious festival has not been an event that the public supports financially and now they have the opportunity to do so. Nevertheless, the usual sections remain with this side venue hoping to fill the festival coffers.

The OFFICIAL SELECTION, Venezia 73 is an international competition of feature films which enjoy their world premieres and have never been screened elsewhere. Parallel to this is the Orizzonti or Horizons international competition and it is these films in this section that portray new aesthetic and expressive trends in art cinema and give the festival its provocative character.

For the fourth year, part of the Orizzonti section is available online in the Sala Web theater. Eight films from this section and selections from Biennale College can be purchased through a limited showcase capped at 800 tickets, which go on sale August 27. The Biennale College provides microbudgets and workshops for film production to young emerging filmmakers.

The other sections of the festival include out of competition films and Venice Classics

A selection of restored classic films and documentaries this year includes Woody Allen’s "Annie Hall". Allen remains the belle of the European film festival circuit despite being taken to task by Susan Sarandon at Cannes this year in May for marrying his adopted daughter that he raised from a child with Mia Farrow.

The festival also finances a special workshop entitled to support the post-production of films from Africa and the Middle East, which is a current trend among first nation festivals.
There is also the International Critics’ Week with debut films by international directors and
Venice Days, an independent section promoted by the Italian Association of Filmmakers.

The titles in the official selection this year include :

UNE VIE ‐by STÉPHANE BRIZÉ (France/Belgium ) is an historical piece set in Normandy in 1819 that spans the life of Jeanne (Judith Chemla) between 18 and 45 who was educated in a convent and who marries Julien (Jean‐Pierre Darroussin), a local viscount who brings her only unhappiness. Brize’s ambition is to show the lives of over protected women in society that later cannot cope with the real world.

The fashionista Tom Ford presents "NOCTURNAL ANIMALS USA" --A two-part film about a manuscript a woman receives from her ex-husband of twenty years and his misadventures on a holiday, played by Jake Gyllenhaal

DAMIEN CHAZELLE’s film "LA LA LAND" from the USA is a tribute to American musicals starring Emma Stone as an aspiring actress and Ryan Gosling as a budding jazz musician.

DEREK CIANFRANCE’s  "THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS" a USA Australia New Zealand coproduction is set in Australia during World War 1 starring the real life and on screen couple (Michael Fassbender playing a lighthouse watchman and his wife Isabel (Alicia Vikander) who after a failure at childbirth discover a baby washed ashore.

Cannibalism continues to be a provocative theme in new films today such as Nicolas Winding Refn’s "Neon Demon" in the official selection at the Cannes festival in May. ANA LILY AMIRPOUR  - "THE BAD BATCH USA"- about a community concerns a community of Texas cannibals in post-apocalyptic world starring Diego Luna, Jim Carrey, Jason Momoa, Suki Waterhouse and Keanu Reeve, who had a bit part in Neon Demon. Amirpour previously made "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night " (2014) about a vampire girl in an Iranian city.

Also of notice is a special film presented in collaboration with Venice Days, a documentary by Enrico Caria The Man Who Didn't Change History, based on the diaries of archaeologist and art historian Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, with images from the archive of Istituto Luce ‐ Cinecittà.Bandinelli serves as a guide for Hitler and Mussolini on the Fuhrers visit to Italy who wanted to help organize the two dictator’s assassination. Caria’s reconstruction of the incident is particularly relevant today, according to festival president Alberto Barbera.

© 2016 - Moira Sullivan - Air Date: 08/17/17
Movie Magazine International