The 83rd Venice Film Festival got underway this week on Italy’s Lido, opening a nine-day showcase that will run through September 12 and once again set the early tone for the upcoming awards season.
Danny Boyle’s “Ink” served as the opening night film, a biographical drama tracing media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s early career and his acquisition of The Sun newspaper. The film stars Guy Pearce, Jack O’Connell and Claire Foy, and its unflinching look at the birth of tabloid culture set an appropriately provocative mood for a festival that has never shied away from prestige and controversy in equal measure.
Two towering figures of American and international cinema are being honoured with Golden Lion lifetime achievement awards this year: George Clooney and Ellen Burstyn. Clooney, whose career spans acclaimed dramas and blockbuster entertainment alike, joins Burstyn, the veteran actress whose decades-long body of work has made her one of the most respected performers of her generation, in receiving Venice’s highest honour outside the main competition.
This year’s competition jury is led by Maggie Gyllenhaal, joined by filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania and composer Daniel Blumberg, who together will decide the winner of the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, when the festival closes with the Italian period drama “Dio Ride,” directed by Giovanni Veronesi and starring Pierfrancesco Favino.
The competition slate itself has generated plenty of pre-festival buzz. Martin McDonagh returns with the dark comedy “Wild Horse Nine,” featuring Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich, while Robert Pattinson takes on the real-life role of television personality Chris Hansen in “Primetime.” Spanish stars Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem headline “Bunker,” and genre-defying documentarian Werner Herzog brings a fictional feature, “Bucking Fastard,” starring Rooney Mara and Kate Mara as twins. South Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong also returns to the festival with “Possible Love,” his first film in eight years.
Not all the attention has been positive. The inclusion of “DAU,” a project from director Ilya Khrzhanovsky, has drawn objections from Ukrainian officials, who argue the film is linked to the Russian state — a characterisation Khrzhanovsky has publicly rejected. Separately, festival organisers face renewed criticism over representation, with only one woman directing among the 21 films selected for the main competition, reviving a long-running debate about gender parity at major film festivals.
Beyond the main competition, the red carpet has already drawn a mix of film and music royalty, with musicians Noel and Liam Gallagher and actress Pamela Anderson among the notable faces spotted on the Lido.
With awards season increasingly shaped by what premieres in Venice, the industry will be watching closely over the next week to see which of this year’s competition entries follows in the footsteps of last year’s “Frankenstein,” which rode a strong Venice reception to nine Oscar nominations.
