Saturday at Venice 2023 wears the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, awarded Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and competitive screenings Ownerdirected by Bradley Cooper in the title role, and Slowly Stefano Sollima.
In the evening there will also be a venue for the presentation of the Campari Passion award by Tonino Zara and the out-of-competition presentation of The Palace by Roman Polanski.
Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement
In the afternoon, two-time Golden Lion director Ang Lee will express his praise for Tony Leung Chiu Wai after the actor was awarded the Golden Lion for Distinguished Service in 1980. International Film Festival Venice Biennale.
This will be followed by an out-of-competition special screening of The Lion’s Share: The Story of an Exhibition by Batista Echegaray and Giuseppe Buchi.
Ang Lee won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2005 for Brokeback Mountain, for which he also won the Oscar for Best Director, and in 2007 for Lust, Seduction and Betrayal, starring Tony. Leung Chiu-wai. role.
The second prize awarded during the day was the Campari Passion for Film Prize, given to Italian production designer Tonino Zera (First King, Improbable Story of Rose Island, Vallansaska – Evil Angels).
Films participating in the competition
The first of two competitive films screened on Saturday 2 September will be Stefano Sollima’s “Italian Adagio” with an all-star cast including Pierfrancesco Favino, Toni Servillo, Valerio Mastandrea, Adriano Giannini, Gianmarco Franchini, Francesco Di Leva, Lorenzo Adorni by Silvia Salvatori.
The plot revolves around sixteen-year-old Manuel, who tries to enjoy life as best he can while taking care of his elderly father. A victim of blackmail, he goes to a party to take a picture of a mysterious man, but feeling betrayed decides to run away, becoming embroiled in affairs far beyond his reach. In fact, the blackmailers pursuing him turn out to be extremely dangerous and determined to eliminate what they consider an inconvenient witness, and the boy will have to ask for protection from two former criminals, old acquaintances of his father.
Maestro: Leonard Bernstein’s kids defend Bradley Cooper after ‘Jewish face’ accusations
After that, “Maestro” will be screened at the Sala Grande with Bradley Cooper acting as director, co-writer and protagonist. The star playing Leonard Bernstein will be joined by Matt Bomer, Maya Hawke, Sarah Silverman, Josh Hamilton, Scott Ellis, Gideon Glick, Sam Nivola, Alexa Swinton and Miriam Shore. The biopic, also produced by Steven Spielberg, tells the love story of Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein.
Titles out of competition
Immediately after the Campari Passion for Film awards, an out-of-competition screening of the film The Palace, directed by Roman Polanski, will take place. Once upon a time, the Palace Hotel still exists. An extraordinary castle, designed in the early 1900s by a mystic architect, a castle located in the mountains of Switzerland, in the middle of a snowy valley. This is the Palace Hotel, a building with a gothic and fairy-tale atmosphere, which attracts rich, spoiled and vicious guests from all over the world every year. They were all united by an event that happens once in a lifetime – the New Year’s party in 2000.
At midnight it will be director Harmony Korine’s turn with his Aggrodrift, a project with stars Jordi Molla and Travis Scott.
In Miami’s seedy underworld, a seasoned hitman sets out on a relentless pursuit of his next target. Filmed entirely with thermal lenses, the man is transported into a twisted world where violence and madness reign. The tension leads to a psychedelic journey where the line between predator and prey all but disappears.
Other sections
Guy Nattiv and Zar Amir Ebrahimi, directors of Tatami, featured in the Horizons section, which talks about what happens to Iranian judoka Leila and her coach Maryam, who receive an ultimatum from the Islamic Republic, which orders a young woman to fake an injury and lose so as not to be considered a traitor to the state.
For Venetian classic The film “Dario Argento Panico” by Simone Scapfidi will be screened. Dario Argento made his most famous films away from the outside world, in hotel rooms. Today, in a hotel room in the Roman countryside, he is writing his latest work. However, this time he is not alone. By mutual agreement with his agent, he decides to return to the hotel to finish his new script and be interviewed, make a film, and then a film crew making a film about him. Inside this structure, Argento does not feel comfortable at first as he tries to find the peace of mind to finish the film and trust whoever is interviewing him. But the movie demon that never left him has followed him and will make him surrender completely again.
There Critics Week instead offers the film “Hard” by British director Luna Carmun with stars Saura Lightfoot Leon, Joseph Quinn and Hayley Squires. The main characters are Maria, a young woman who grew up with a mother with mental problems, and Michael, a young man with a difficult past who forms an unexpected and deep connection.
Authors days
The fourth film of the competition is “Sobre todo de noche”, the first work of the Basque Victor Iriarte, dedicated to the theme of mothers who in Francoist Spain suffered for decades from the theft of their newborns.
Luca Guadagnino, on the other hand, will receive the SIAE Andrea Purgatori Lifetime Achievement Award.
“Fragments of a Love Journey” is the second documentary film by the Frenchwoman Chloe Barro, the film “Venetian Nights”. It is a work composed of fragments, a collage of many videos created over the years of love stories experienced by the director herself. Barro has compiled video memories of his relationship, and this documentary allows us to immerse ourselves in those special feelings that persist even after the end of the love story.