While in the last edition a documentary film dedicated to Nan Goldin won the Golden Lion, this year the Venice Film Festival does not present films openly inspired by the art world. Despite this, showcasing great contemporary cinema, the Exhibition continues to take the form of an extremely stimulating context for new aesthetic and artistic canons.
New edition of the magazine International Film Festival organized by the Venice Biennale under the direction of Alberto Barbera. Like every year, the festival aims to raise awareness of contemporary international cinema, while also leaving plenty of room for highlighting the restoration of classic films in order to encourage viewers to become familiar with the history of cinema and the aesthetic paradigms that characterize it.
Along with individual sections such as International Critics’ Week AND Authors days, the official selection includes several. The first and most famous of all Venice 80, which includes twenty-one feature films of world premieres. Among them, it is necessary to mention Poor things Yorgos Lanthimos based on the novel The life and secrets of England’s first female doctor Alasdair Grey. Lanthimos’ film, starring Emma Stone, demonstrates its idiosyncrasy through one of the director’s most distinctive aesthetic elements: heavy use of wide angle and consequent distortion of space.
But this time, Lanthimos is also experimenting a lot on a chromatic level, mixing color sequences with other black and whites. And this is the centerpiece of another well-known game, namely: El Conde Pablo Larraina, horror comedy starring Augusto Pinochet as a vampire. Another film that should be mentioned among the films Venice 80 There is Priscilla Sofia Coppola, adaptation of Priscilla Presley’s memoirs. In Coppola’s film, the direction appears to be very sensitive, seeking to plunge into the past while respecting its forms.
The section is also tight Out of competitiondedicated to the works of famous authors with a pronounced originality. They are really present Coupe de Chance Woody Allen e The Wonderful Story of Hernie Sugar Wes Anderson, which are a decidedly idiosyncratic aesthetic. In his film in particular, Anderson seems to want to re-offer his distinctive formal traits, such as shot selection and content, with careful geometry, a tool used for frustrated storytelling that is often crude and improbable. .
There are also sections next to them. horizons AND Additional Horizons: the first pays special attention to emerging and emerging authors, while the second selects a maximum of ten titles characterized by an original approach to relations with the public. Finally there Venetian classic, which, as mentioned above, dedicates space to the history of cinema in every sense: through the restoration of classic films, as well as the screening of documentaries about cinema and authors. In a word, there is a lot of space left for history, especially since the Venice Biennale is part of this very history.
Next to the already mentioned Poor things from Lanthimos, El Conde Author: Larrain e Priscilla Coppola, among the works that cannot be missed, there are certainly La Bethdystopian film directed by Bertrand Bonello. Allem’s theory Timm Kroeger, also in black and white.
The 80th Venice Film Festival, which began on August 30, will end on September 9.
Information and program: https://www.labiennale.org/it/cinema/2023.