Four Italian directors are in
competition at the 72nd Venice Film Festival, plucked from a
wider selection of others that weren't chosen, including films
by big names such as Paolo Sorrentino, Nanni Moretti, and Matteo
Garrone.
In response to the inevitable controversy over the films by
those directors being passed over, festival director Alberto
Barbera told ANSA, "the juries are unpredictable".
Heading to the Lido, then, are films by directors Marco
Bellocchio, Luca Guadagnino, Piero Messina, and Giuseppe
Gaudino.
Bellocchio's "Sangue Del Mio Sangue" (Blood of My Blood),
starring Roberto Herlitzka, Pier Giorgio Bellocchio, Filippo
Timi, and Alba Rohrwacher, tells the story of a 17th-century
nun, Benedetta (played by Lidiya Liberman), condemned to live
within the walls of an ancient prison after seducing a pair of
twins, one of whom is a priest. The prison is in Bobbio, where
Bellocchio was born.
Guadagnino's entry, "A Bigger Splash," on the other hand,
is an erotic and tragic film starring Matthias Schoenaerts as
Paul and Tilda Swindon as Marianne, an American couple on
vacation in Italy, thrown into difficulty when Marianne invites
her former lover, played by Ralph Fiennes, and his daughter,
played by Dakota Johnson, to join them.
"L'Attesa" (The Wait) is Piero Messina's feature-film
directing debut. A graduate of Rome's Experimental Film Centre,
and a former assistant director to Paolo Sorrentino, Messina
wrote the story of Anna and Jeanne, two women in a small
Sicilian villa awaiting Giuseppe, son of the former and
girlfriend of the latter. The women, played by French actresses
Juliette Binoche and Lou De Laage, get to know each other over
the days of waiting, and the story leads to a traditional Easter
procession in the center of the small village.
In "Per Amor Vostro", Valerina Golino plays the tormented
wife of a member of the Naples Camorra mafia. A mother of three
sons, she is so unhappy in her life that she has ceased to see
in color, and has lost herself through her love for others,
until the story takes a turn towards her redemption.
There are also three Italian films in the "Out of
Competition" lineup and two in the "Horizons" category.
Photo: a scene from Bellocchio's Sangue del mio Sangue
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