81st Venice Film Festival, Orizzonti and Classics

From August 28 to September 7, the Venice Film Festival will take place, one of the international film events that El Hype covers every year. In addition to the Official Selection in competition, films will be presented in various sections such as Orizzonti, Series or Venice Classics, dedicated to documentaries and restored classics.

The Orizzonti jury will be chaired by American director and screenwriter Debra Granik, who will be joined by Iranian writer, director and producer Ali Asgari; Syrian director and screenwriter Soudade Kaadan; Greek director, screenwriter and producer Christos Nikou; Swedish actress and director Tuva Novotny; Hungarian filmmaker Gábor Reisz; and Italian screenwriter and director Valia Santella.

Out of competition – Fiction

Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will be the opening night film that will be attended by Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Jenna Ortega and Willem Dafoe. The sequel to the celebrated 1988 film will be released commercially on September 4. Pupi Avati’s L’Orto Americano will close the festival. The representatives of Japanese cinema will be Takeshi Kitano with the medium-length film Broken Rage and the debutant Kurosawa Kiyoshi, with the thriller Cloud. Francesca Comencini, daughter of Luigi Comencini, directs Il tempo che ci vuole, and Lav Diaz will present Phantosmia, which will keep us in front of the screen for more than four hours. Belgian director Fabrice du Welz‘s Maldoror, starring Anthony Bajon (Junkyard Dog, 2023), Laurent Lucas and Sergi Lopez, is a thriller about an undercover cop dissatisfied with the limitations of the law as he tracks down a sex offender.

Harmony Korine‘s Baby Invasion, following Aggro Dr1ft (2023) continues to experiment, in this case with a story in which baby-faced burglars are captured with six body cameras, one of them worn by the director, and rob a house from a first-person shooter perspective. At the other end of the style spectrum, veteran Claude Lelouch will release Finalement, starring Sandrine Bonnaire and Kad Merad, a road movie through France, a musical fantasy with a soundtrack by Ibrahim Maalouf. Jon Watts’ Wolfs and short films by Marco Bellocchio Se posso permettermi Capitolo II and Alice Rohrwacher Allégorie Citadine complete the section.

Out of competition – Non-fiction

Irène Jacob and Mattieu Amalric star in Israeli director Amos Gitai’s Why War; Asif Kapadia‘s 2073 (Amy, 2015) will project us into the future and the great challenges that await us. Bestiari, Erbari, Lapidari, by Massimo D’Anolfi, Martina Perenti and Apocalypse in the Tropics, by Petra Costa, One to One: John & Yoko, by Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards, are also included in this section. Separated, by the legendary Errol Morris, chronicles the Trump administration’s controversial decision to separate children from their parents at the Mexican border in 2018. The documentary adapts Jacob Soboroff’s bestseller Separated: An American Tragedy.

More international conflicts, with Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989, by Swedish director Goran Hugo Olsson and Russians at War, by Russian-Canadian documentary filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova, which will follow a Russian battalion in Ukraine. Also focusing on the invaded country is Olha Zhurba‘s Songs of Slow Burning Earth, where reflection on the war is interwoven with testimonies of the tragedy of the normalization of war.

Romanian Andrei Ujica‘s TWST/Things We Said Today offers a more relaxed look at music history, showing the frenzy caused by the Beatles’ August 1965 concert in New York, while German director Andres Veiel‘s Riefenstahl explores the artistic legacy of Leni Riefenstahl and her complex ties to the Nazi regime, providing evidence suggesting awareness of the regime’s atrocities.

Special screenings

Leopardi. Il Poeta Dell’Infinito by Sergio Rubini.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World byPeter Weir.
Beauty is not a Sin by Nicolas Winding Refn

Series

Disclaimer, by Alfonso Cuarón, is an Apple TV+ production, starring Cate Blanchett, who plays journalist Catherine Ravenscroft, engaged in exposing transgressions by prestigious institutions; she is joined in the cast by Kevin Kline and Sacha Baron Cohen. Directors Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Sandra Romero and David Martín de los Santos will present in Venice the series The New Years, starring Iria del Río and Francesco Carril, a love story over ten years, with reunions and breakups. Denmark’s Thomas Vinterberg (Another Round, 2020) directs Families Like Ours, a tragedy set against the backdrop of a climate crisis, in miniseries format, starring Asta Kamma August, Paprika Steen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas.

M – Il Figlio del Secolo directed by Joe Wright (Darkest Hour, 2017) will be the most Italian of the series premiering at the Lido, as it is the biography of dictator Benito Mussolini, the chronicle of his rise to power, starring Luca Marinelli (Martin Eden, 2019).

Orizzonti Extra

Tim Fehlbaum‘s September 5 will open the section with a drama set at the 1972 Munich Olympics, starring Peter Sargsgaard. Vittoria, by Alessandro Cassigoli (Californie, 2021) and Casey Kauffman’s  features Vincenzo Scarica and Marilena Amato in its cast; Frederic Farrucci’s Le Mohican tells the story of Joseph (Alexis Manenti), one of the last coastal shepherds in Corsica, whose land is coveted for a real estate project, to which he will not yield. Italian Paola Randi directs La Storia del Frank e della Nina, with Gabriele Monti, Samuele Teneggi and Ludovica Nasti, an Italian-Swiss co-production comedy with coming of age included.

Khaled Mansour’s Seeking Haven for Mr. Rambo is an Egyptian debut feature about a young man forced to face his fears and find himself while trying to save his dog and his best friend. Iranian director Nader Saeivar‘s The Witness, scripted by Jafar Panahi and the director himself, tells the story of Tarlan, a retired dance teacher who witnesses a murder committed by a prominent government figure and must choose between bowing to political pressure or risking her reputation and livelihood to seek justice. After Party, by Czech director Vojtech Strakaty, has already received an award for its screenplay (“Star of Tomorrow”) from the Film Foundation at the 2018 Karlovy Vary IFF. The film was shot in 2022 and will premiere in Venice, it is his first feature film, having currently in post-production The Other Side of Summer, which was shot in 2023. King Ivory, directed by American John Swab (Candy Land, 2022) and starring Ben Foster and Melissa Leo, was based on an extensive investigation into fentanyl trafficking and its effects, with all its aspects, crime and addiction. Also participating in Orizzonti Extra will be the film Edge of Night, by Turkish-born German director Türker Süer.

Orizzonti

Valerio Mastandrea’s Nonostante will open the section. Tunisian director Mehdi M. Barsaoui will premiere in this section his drama Aïcha, starring a woman who flees her small village after miraculously surviving a bus accident, and Palestinian director Scandar Copti will bring Happy Holidays, set in modern-day Israel, where a small incident triggers a series of events. Completing the section:

Quiet Life, by Alexandros Avranas.
Mon Inséparable, by Anne-Sophie Bailly.
Familia, by Francesco Costabile.
One of Those Days When Hemme Dies, by Murat Firatoglu.
Familiar Touch, by Sarah Friedland.
Marco by Jon Garaño (Loreak) and Aitor Arregi.
Carissa, by Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar.
Wishing on a Star, by Peter Kerekes.
Mistress Dispeller, by Elizabeth Lo.
The New Year that Never Came, by Bogdan Muresanu.
Pooja, Sir, by Deepak Rauniyar.
Of Dogs and Men, by Dani Rosenberg.
Pavements, by Alex Ross Perry.
Happyend, by Neo Sora.
L’Attachement,by Carine Tardieu.
Diciannove, by Giovanni Tortorici.

Constel·lació Portabella (Claudio Zulian, 2024).

Venice Classics, documentaries on cinema

Miyazaki, L’Esprit de la Nature (Léo Favier)
I will Revenge this World with Love S Paradjanov (Zara Jian)
Le Cinéma de Jean-Pierre Léaud (Cyril Leuthy)
From Darkness to Light (Eric Friedler, Michael Lurie)
Carlo Mazzacurati – Una Certa Idea di Cinema (Mario Canale, Enzo Monteleone)
Chain Reactions (Alexandre O.Philippe)
Maroun Returns to Beirut (Feirouz Serhal)
Volonté – L’Uomo dai Mille Volti (Francesco Zippel)
Constel·lació Portabella (Claudio Zulian)

Venice Classics, restored films

La notte (Michelangelo Antonioni)
The Mahabharata ( Peter Brook)
Jeux interdits (René Clement)
L’oro di Napoli (Vittorio De Sica)
His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks)
The Ritual (Girish Kasaravalli)
The Big Heat (Fritz Lang)
Blood and Sand (Rouben Mamoulian)
Bend of the River (Anthony Mann)
All Mixed Up (Yasuzo Masumura)
Ecce Bombo (Nanni Moretti)
The Man Who Left His Will On Film (Nagisa Oshima)
The Time And The Change Of Augusto Matraga (Roberto Santos)
Goldflakes (Werner Schroeter)
La peau douce (Francois Truffaut)
Travolti da un insolito destino nell’azzurro mare d’agosto (Lina Wertmuller)
Pusher (Nicolas Winding Refn)
Model (Frederick Wiseman)