The Venice Film Festival's 73rd
edition opening Thursday through September 10 will feature three
Italian films competing for a Golden Lion this year.
The trio includes two coming-of-age films.
Questi Giorni (These Days), director Giuseppe Piccioni's
tenth movie, focuses on the life-changing choices of a group of
Italian university students in the Italian province with a cast
including Margherita Buy and Sergio Rubini.
Piuma, or feather, by Italian-British director and writer
Roan Johnson, is a teen pregnancy story starring Luigi Fedele
and Blu Yoshimi.
The third production vying for an award is Spira Mirabilis,
a documentary by husband-and-wife duo Massimo D'Anolfi and
Martina Parenti - a visual story on immortality filmed in
different parts of the world.
Another leading Italian director, Oscar-winner Paolo
Sorrentino, will be debuting at the festival with a television
series - The Young Pope - starring Jude Law as a fictional
conservative American pontiff, Pius XIII.
Overall, the 73rd edition of the festival will feature
several star-studded international productions directed by,
among others, Mel Gibson, Tom Ford, Pablo Larrain, Damien
Chazelle, Terrence Malick, Emir Kusturica, Francois Ozon,
Stephane Brize and Wim Wenders.
The Gibson-directed Hacksaw Ridge stars Andrew Garfield as
an army doctor during World War II who became the first
conscientious objector in US history to be granted the
congressional medal of honor.
Nocurnal Animals by Tom Ford, based on a novel by Austin
Wright, focuses on the story of a woman (Amy Adams) who receives
a manuscript from her ex-husband and a the holiday drama of a
man interpreted by Jake Gyllenhaal.
Jackie, a film by Chile's Pablo Larrain, spans a four-day
period in the late First Lady's life, starting with the day of
John Kennedy's assassination, starring Natalie Portman.
The festival's opener, Damien Chazelle's La La Land, pays
homage to the heyday of American musicals with Ryan Gosling and
Emma Stone and will world-premiere in competition on Thursday.
Terrence Malick's first documentary, Voyage of Time,
narrated by Cate Blanchett, is described by the philosopher as a
celebration of the universe.
Kusturica's On the Milky Road tells the story of a man,
played by the director himself, during three different stages of
his life, including a wartime milkman who has a passionate love
story with a woman played by Italian actress Monica Bellucci.
Other award competitors include Ozon's period piece Frantz
and fellow French director Brize's Une Vie, based on Guy de
Maupassant's novel.
Wenders will be in Venice with 3-D drama, The Beautiful Days
of Aranjuez, which focuses on a conversation about love between
a man and a woman played by Reda Kateb and Sophie Semin.
This year's edition of the festival will be dedicated to two
great directors who have died this year, Abbas Kiarostami and
Michael Cimino.
Kiarostami will be remembered with 76 Minutes and 15 Seconds
with Kiarostami made by collaborator Seifollah Samadian while
Cimino will be remembered with a screening of the Year of the
Dragon.
photo: Giuseppe Piccioni
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