Glamorous Venice Film Festival courts controversy
ROME: Global superstars Lady Gaga, Ryan Gosling and Vanessa Redgrave descend on Venice this week as the annual fi lm festival kicks off on Wednesday to controversy over the inclusion of Netfl ix productions and there being just one female director in competition.
Some 21 features will be locking horns for the prized Golden Lion, which will be awarded on Sept 8 at the Palazzo del Cinema on the Venice Lido, the iconic setting for Luchino Visconti’s masterpiece “Death in Venice”.
The festival jury is chaired by Guillermo Del Toro, last year’s winner with “The Shape of Water”.
Australian Jennifer Kent is the only woman gunning for the Golden Lion this year, with “The Nightingale”.
The lack of female directors was blasted by feminist associations in an open letter sent on Aug 11 to the festival’s artistic Barbera.
The letter was a reaction not just to the festival’s male- centric selection but also to statements by Barbera, who in a recent press conference explained that he made his choices based on “the quality of the fi lm and not the sex of the director”.
“If we impose quotas, I resign,” he said, defending a selection criticised as “politically incorrect”, especially compared to the latest edition of Canne, which saw a call for gender equality in cinema.
A number of fi lms being shown in Venice have been picked up by streaming service Netfl ix, including the Coen Brothers’ “The Ballad of Buster director Alberto Scruggs”.
Starring Tim Blake Nelson, James Franco and Liam Neeson, “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” features six tales about the Wild West narrated by Joel and Ethan Coen.
The inclusion of Netfl ix fi lms and their contemporaneous release in theatres and online has drawn the wrath of Italy’s two major cinema associations Anec and Anem, who feel people will stay at home rather than go out to watch the movies.
‘First Man’
“I can’t see any reason why a fi lm by (director of Golden Lion contender “Roma”, Alfonso) Cuaron or the Coens should be excluded just because they’re produced by Netfl ix,” Berbera said during the press conference presenting the festival to reporters last month.
The star- studded festival kicks off with “First Man”, the new fi lm from the Oscarwinning director of “La La Land” Damien Chazelle.
The fi lm, which stars Canadian Ryan Gosling, follows the life of astronaut Neil Armstrong in the years leading up to 1969, when he became the fi rst man to walk on the moon.
However the most eagerly awaited appearance on the red carpet will undoubtedly be that of provocative pop superstar Lady Gaga, who stars in the outofcompetition “A Star is Born”.
Bradley Cooper plays a harddrinking country artiste who discovers a young singer played by Gaga and is also making his directorial debut with the fi lm.
The pair also wrote and recorded new songs for the fi lm, the third remake of the
Some 21 features will be locking horns for the prized Golden Lion, which will be awarded on Sept 8 at the Palazzo del Cinema on the Venice Lido.
entertainment industry romance classic.
Among the major names expected on the lagoon are Frenchman Jacques Audiard — who this time is taking on the Western genre with “The Sisters Brothers” — and his countryman Olivier Assayas, in competition with the comedy “Non-Fiction”, starring his favourite actress Juliette Binoche.
Grand Prix winner at Cannes in 2015 and Oscar winner for best foreign fi lm the following year with his fi rst feature fi lm “The Son of Saul”, the Hungarian Laszlo Nemes will return to big competition with “Sunset”.
Big things are also expected from “The Favourite”, a period drama by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos that plunges viewers into the court of Queen Anne at the beginning of the 18th century and stars Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz.
As every year, the festival will award two Golden Lions for their career to two fi lm giants, in this case the 81-year- old British actress Vanessa Redgrave and Canadian director David Cronenberg. — AFP