The oldest film festival in the world, which since 1932 has gone through turbulent years with booed verdicts as in 1960 when Rocco and his brothers by Luchino Visconti was preferred a modest film French and as in the Sixty-eight when it suffered harsh protests, reaches an important milestone: the one that opens on August 30th and closes on September 9th is the 80th edition. Being able to be central in the international scene that is constantly changing (think of the streaming platforms today as a player like the majors and until a few years ago non-existent), being a reference point for authors from all over the world who aspire to have the premiere at the Lido of Venice in the fascinating rationalist Palazzo del cinema, becoming a springboard for Oscar-winning films, continuing the healthy challenge with the Cannes Film Festival are missions that year after year have become goals achieved even if each time to be confirmed.
This year two elements have been added to condition the festival: the union strike of authors and actors in America (and England) that with great absences from Bradley Cooper to Michael Fassbender to Emma Stone has subtracted glamorous lymph from the Festival - essential not to reduce the event to a review only for the cinephile bubble - and a goal of relaunching Italian cinema in cinemas, a fundamental opportunity from Venice to re-enthuse the public also to the stories of the house and not only to the Barbie and Oppenheimer on duty.
Here then are six Italian films competing for the Golden Lion, all important starting from the budget, Comandante by Edoardo De Angelis; Finally L'Alba by Saverio Costanzo; Io Capitano by Matteo Garrone; Lubo by Giorgio Diritti; Enea by Pietro Castellitto and Adagio by Stefano Sollima. And many others scattered among Horizons, out of competition, Giornate autori, Sic.
An almost institutional mission, despite the freedom of selection, for Alberto Barbera, the longest-lived of the directors of the Festival, who still has one year, 2024, to finish his third term at the helm of the festival. After the pandemic, cinema in cinemas has resumed with enormous difficulty and the Italian one has suffered even more, it is clear that from the multitude of titles, hoping for good reception by the public and critics, something can be moved.
The gender issue remains in the background, not yet resolved: equality is far away (but the last three Golden Lions should be remembered are women Chloé Zhao, Audrey Diwan, Laura Poitras) but the problem as well as for the Venetian selection is productive upstream given that of the over 4 thousand titles registered the male share is 66.56%.
With the jury chaired by Damien Chazelle, the American director of La La Land and a competition of 23 titles, here are some of the most anticipated films of Venice 80, the so-called highlights.
Poor Creatures by Yorgos Lanthimos with Emma Stone Bad Girl, film adaptation of the 1992 novel, Life and Mysteries of England's First Female Doctor, by Alasdair Gray, which will see her in the role of the young undead Bella Baxter. Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo in the cast.
Master of Bradley Cooper, with the actor back in front and behind the direction after the brilliant debut of A star is a born, here in the biopic about Leonard Bernstein and his wife (Carey Mulligan). Sofia Coppola's Priscilla based on Priscilla Beaulieu's memoirs, Elvis and me, focusing on her turbulent history of love with the king of rock and roll. The Killer by David Fincher who returns after many years from Fight Club and then again Ferrari by Michael Mann with Adam Driver (who had the exemption to participate) in the role of the Italian genius of Maranello, without forgetting The Palace by Roman Polanski, as well as Coupe de chance by Woody Allen. Among the Italians Io Capitano by Matteo Garrone, award-winning director of Gomorrah and Il racconto dei racconti, is also internationally perhaps the most awaited: the very current story of the odyssey of two unaccompanied minors from Senegal to Fortress Europe through desert, Libyan atrocities and crossing, will hardly go unnoticed in Italy of the hotspots at the extreme.
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