The 71st annual Venice Film
Festival opened with strong applause for Alejandro Gonzalez
Inarritu's black comedy Birdman, starring Michael Keaton in a
picture that is already generating Academy Award buzz.
Birdman, in which Keaton plays a washed-up actor struggling
to stage a Broadway plan, features a star-studded cast that
includes Edward Norton, Zach Galifianakis, Stone and Naomi
Watts.
Thursday's opening night of the world's oldest cinema fest
included more somber fare as well, with The Look of Silence: The
Act of Killing, a documentary by Joshua Oppenheimer on the 1965
genocide in Indonesia following the Suharto coup when death
squads hunted anyone deemed to be a communist.
The producer found stories of horror and hatreds that
continue to this day.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and Culture Minister
Dario Franceschini were in the front row cheering on Italian
cinema in competition for the Venice festival's top honours.
Napolitano, a noted cinephile, has gone on record as
supporting domestic movies against the onslaught of Hollywood.
The trio of Italian offerings vying for the Golden Lion at
the 71st fest have been touted as the most impressive in years,
giving Italy a chance to have a two-year winning streak for the
Lido's highest prize.
Following Italy's win last year for the film Sacro GRA,
this year's competition from Italy unfolds between Mario
Martone's 19th-century drama about Romanci poet Giacomo
Leopardi, Il Giovane Favoloso (The Fabulous Young Man) starring
Elio Germano; a screen adaptation of the book Black Souls,
directed by Francesco Munzi; and Saverio Costanzo's Hungry
Hearts, starring Adam Driver and Alba Rohrwacher.
Martone's film centres on Marche-born poet Leopardi,
Italy's most anthologised poet after Dante, played here by
Germano in the spirit of an anti-conformist rebel.
The title comes from a short story about the precocious and
prodigiously gifted Leopardi, born in the Marche village of
Recanati, by Anna Maria Ortese.
Hungry Hearts takes place in New York City, where a couple
battles over their son's diet.
In the film, the mother, played by Rohrwacher, insists on
vegan fare, but the father, played by Driver, has to intervene
when their son eventually becomes ill.
The third film in the Italian lineup, Black Souls, tackles
the contemporary state of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta mafia.
Black Souls is based on the eponymous book by Gioacchino
Ciriaco, and tells the tale of a farmer's three sons, each of
whom crosses paths with the life of crime in a different way.
Luigi is an international drug trafficker, Rocco is an
adopted son from Milan who is also a businessman with Mafia
money, and the third and oldest brother Luciano stays home,
raising the family's goats.
Among the other highlights at the festival will be Abel
Ferrara's biopic on iconic Italian writer and filmmaker Pier
Paolo Pasolini starring brooding American actor Willem Dafoe;
and a celebration of Sophia Loren in her 80th year.
Hong Kong director Ann Hui's The Golden Era, a story of a
radical writer living in a period of Japanese imperialism in
China, will close the Lido-based festival on September 6.
French film composer Alexandre Desplat will head the main
jury panel that includes British actor Tim Roth, Palestinian
director Elia Suleiman, Italian actor-director Carlo Verdone,
and Chinese actress and director Joan Chen.
The international lineup also includes Swedish director Roy
Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
while David Oelhoffen's Loin des Hommes stars Viggo Mortensen as
a teacher who becomes friendly with a dissident during France's
war with Algeria.
Offerings from the United States include Good Kill by
director Andrew Niccol and starring Ed Harris and Ethan Hawke as
a drone operator in Afghanistan; and David Gordon Green's
Manglehorn, starring Al Pacino, Holly Hunter and Chris Messina.
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