Rome - Burn After Reading, perhaps the most eagerly
anticipated film at this year's Venice Film Festival, is not running
in the official competition and thus won't win any prizes in the
lagoon city.
But if a recent trend is to be confirmed, the film is likely to
make a splash at the next Oscars.
Made by Joel and Ethan Coen, it has the honour of opening the
festival in a world premiere that will lift the lid on the latest
effort by the siblings whose No Country For Old Men triumphed at the
last Academy Awards.
Billed as a spy-story laced with black humour, Burn After Reading
boasts a high-powered Hollywood cast including George Clooney, Tilda
Swinton, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich and Frances McDormand.
Last year, two films launched in Venice, Atonement and Michael
Clayton, garnered seven Oscar nominations each, while in 2005
Brokeback Mountain scooped Venice's top Leone d'Oro (Golden Lion)
award and later earned its Taiwan-born director Ang Lee an Oscar as
Best Director.
The American Academy Awards also loom large over this year's
official competition in Venice, with Oscar hopefuls and past winners
included in the selection of 21 films vying for the Leone d'Oro.
Jonathan Demme, winner of a 1991 Best Director Oscar for Silence
of the Lambs, is competing in Venice with Rachel Getting Married, a
drama starring Anne Hathaway and Debra Winger about an estranged
daughter's return to the family home for her sister's wedding.
Glamour stars Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger, both Academy Award
winners, pair up for The Burning Plain which marks the debut as
director of Mexican Guillermo Arriaga, the screenwriter of the
acclaimed Amores perros, 21 Grams and Babel directed by his
compatriot, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.
A strong US presence in Venice's main competition also includes
Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke and Marisa
Tomei, and Kathryn Bigelow's Hurt Locker, a film shot in Jordan but
dealing with the war in neighbouring Iraq and the physical and
emotional strains faced by members of an elite US military unit.
The Hollywood-link coupled with the box-office success that
usually accompanies films associated with the Academy Awards has
helped raise the Venice Film Festival's commercial profile, but the
event which was first held in 1932 has a long-established reputation
for showcasing emerging cinema, including films from Asia and Latin
America, and this year proves no exception.
Leading Japan's three-film contingent in the main competition, is
Akires to kame (Achilles and the Tortoise) by Takeshi Kitano, whose
talents including directing, writing, acting and designing video
games.
A well-known figure in Venice, where stars and celebrities often
arrive in gondolas to the festival's famous Lido venue, Kitano walked
off with the 1997 Leone d'Oro for his Hana-bi (Fireworks) and was
awarded a special prize for his direction of Zatoichi in 2003.
The Japanese line-up is completed by Hayao Miyazaki's Gake no ue
no Ponyo (Ponyo on Cliff by the Sea) and Mamoru Oshii's The Sky
Crawlers - both animated films competing in a festival which has in
the past shown its appreciation for the genre by bestowing a lifetime
achievement award to Miyazaki in 2005.
Of the more than 50 films in Venice this year, representing 18
countries and including documentaries and shorts, the record for the
longest film goes to Philippines director Lav Diaz's Melancholia,
which with a running time of some seven-and-a-half hours is included
in the Orizzonti (Horizons) section.
The festival's 65th edition - periods when it was not held
included the turbulent late 1960s, following disruptions by left-wing
student protestors, and the early 1970s - also marks a strong Italian
presence, with home-grown films making up almost a fifth of the main
competition.
Amongst these are veteran director Pupi Avati's Il Papa di
Giovanna (Giovanna's Father) and Turkish-born, but long-time Italy-
based Ferzan Ozpetek's Un giorno perfetto (A Perfect Day). These,
like all films in the main competition are world premieres.
Perhaps fittingly, given the Italian undercurrent, this year's
Lifetime Achievement award goes to Italian film master, Ermanno Olmi,
20 years after his The Legend of the Holy Drinker won the Leone
d'Oro.
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