AUGUST 31 – SEPTEBMER 10, 2022 11 DAYS 47 REVIEWS
TFV: You’re very active on Twitter, responding to people’s questions about the festival. How much patience is required to deal with some of the nastier BARBERA:comments?Naturally, it’s sad when they find the answers unsatisfactory, usually because screenings are sold out, but it must be said the gala premieres in the Sala Grande have always been like that, they sell out very fast. What amuses me most is a lot of their questions can be answered simply by visiting the festival’s website. Then again, I guess it’s easier to tweet a question than to look up the answer online.
(Continued on page 2)
TFV: It’s the 78th edition, and the 90th anniversary of the festival. Why was it important to highlight both numbers?
TFV’s Max Borg Interviews Venice director Alberto Barbera
THE FILM VERDICT (TFV): How does it feel to be back at full BARBERA:throttle?It’sa relief. The pandemic isn’t completely gone, which is why we’re encouraging people to still wear masks in the theaters and other areas, but we can’t enforce that as a rule because the festival follows Italian law. That said, the numbers so far are very encouraging. I don’t have the final figures yet, but we had 12,000 accredited visitors and sold around 85,000 tickets in 2019 [pre COVID], and it looks like we’ll exceed both this year.
TFV: Politics play an important role in the Italian cultural landscape, as you experienced during your first mandate as festival director from 1998 to 2002. How has Venice managed to retain its independence, when the government changes on an almost yearly basis?
BARBERA: No other film festival is as old as Venice, and 90 is a major milestone. The editions aren’t as many because there have been interruptions, during the Second World War and in the aftermath of the 1968 protests. We won’t be doing a celebration per se during the festival, but we have been hosting some anniversary events, and we will be unveiling the English language edition of the commemorative book written by film historian Gian Piero Brunetta.
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VENICE BIENNALE REVIEW DAILY
BARBERA: There’s two, actually. The Palazzo del Casinò is being renovated, and the space that used to house the Sala Casinò has been repurposed for a restaurant. On the third floor, what used to be the press conference room and doubled as a movie theater in the evening is now the new Sala Casinò, with 340 seats, and the press conferences will now take place where the photocalls used to happen. As for the other venue you mentioned, you might remember we had an open air theater near the PalaBiennale, in 2020 and 2021, to make up for the reduced capacity. That was only viable in the evening, for two screenings, so this year we’ve turned it into an indoor screening room, also with 340 seats, which will be used for the Venice Classics section, as well as reruns of the Giornate degli Autori and International Critics’ Week films.
BARBERA: One year, the government fell on the same day as our opening ceremony (laughs). The thing is, the Biennale as a whole used to be a government body before it became a private entity in 1998. The one thing that remained from the old system, which didn’t change until a few years ago, was that the mandates of the various department heads were tied to the president (of the Biennale). So when Berlusconi won the 2001 election and Paolo Baratta resigned as Biennale president, because he didn’t get along with the new Minister of Cultural Heritage, I had to leave as well. I hope the festival will continue to retain its autonomy in the future, even with governments whose ideals don’t align with ours, because culture should be about the quality of the artworks and not who’s in charge at any given time.
TFV: In 2020, Venice, Telluride and Toronto did an unprecedented team up for the world premiere of Nomadland. With the pandemic being almost a thing of the past, how’s the current relationship between the fall festivals?
VENICE BIENNALE REVIEW DAILY 31 AUGUST 2022 Page 2
TFV’s Max Borg Interviews
Venice director Alberto Barbera
(Continued)
TFV: There’s a new screening room this year, the Sala Corinto. How did that come about?
BARBERA: It has improved. We no longer have the rivalry that got quite ugly around 2016 2017, with all three events competing for world premieres. Now, in terms of scheduling, we do our best to accommodate the films that wish to attend Telluride as well, and Toronto starts when Venice is almost over, so there’s minimal overlap. It’s become clear, for all involved, that being aggressively competitive with each other is counterintuitive vis à vis our mission, which is to promote and support films.
TFV: Italian exhibitors have famously complained about your acceptance of Netflix films in competition. How did they react when you chose one (Noam Baumbach’s White Noise) as this year’s opening BARBERA:film?There’s been no reaction, publicly or privately. I think they have much bigger concerns to deal with, because theatrical attendance in Italy has been in very bad shape, in part because the overall quality of films during the pandemic was so so. But I believe it will get better in the coming months, thanks to titles that have been held off until now, as well as this year’s Cannes roster and the films that are premiering at the fall festivals.
The feature film FRONT by Edward Berger (Amusement Park Film) will enter the race for Germany for the 95th Oscars® in the category Best International Feature Film. The decision was made by an independent jury whose members were appointed
universal respect as gauged by the fact that she has received 16 career achievement awards, including the Career Golden Lion from the 2022 edition of the Venice Film Festival.
GERMAN FILM MAKES OSCAR NOISE FOR NETFLIX
Her first screen credit may have been her birthname, as Catherine Dorléac, in Les Collégiennes (1957), but it launched Catherine Deneuve’s remarkable career. Her first major film role was as co star in Jacques Demy’s beloved musical, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), with Anne Vernon, and Nino Castelnuovo, and winner of Cannes’ Palme d’Or and nominated for five Oscars. Full Bio
“Almostindustry.onehundred years ago Erich Maria Remarque wrote a book that sadly is more relevant today than we would have ever anticipated. That the jury has now chosen our film to send into the race for the Oscars® is an incredible honour. It’s going to be a long road ahead,” said Director Edward Berger. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT is a German anti war novel and a classic of world literature from 1928, its authenticity drawing upon Erich Maria Remarque's own experiences in the trenches.
ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT is a production by Amusement Park Film for Netflix. The film will have its world premiere in the section Special Presentations at the Toronto International Film Festival on 12 September, 2022. The European premiere will be held as a gala premiere during the Zurich Film Festival. Netflix will cooperate with distribution partner 24 Blider for the film’s nationwide theatrical release in Germany on September 29. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT will open in US cinemas in October and can be seen on Netflix starting October 28, 2022.
VENICE BIENNALE REVIEW DAILY 31 AUGUST 2022 Page 3
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Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the 79th Venice International Film Festival
Catherine Deneuve
Actor
by various associations working within the German film
Catherine Deneuve (birthname: Catherine Fabienne Dorléac) is one of the legendary film actors of the post war era and the iconic face of French and European glamour on screen. Active as an actor for an incredible eight decades (and still going strong), Deneuve has worked with a great array of major filmmakers across multiple generations, and gained
VENICE BIENNALE REVIEW DAILY 31 AUGUST 2022 Page 4
Bill Kramer
Oscars Team Flies to The Lido for The First Time
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will officially attend the Venice International Film Festival, on the occasion of the festival's 90th anniversary. La Biennale di Venezia, Cinecittà, and Mastercard will welcome the Academy's new CEO Bill Kramer who will participate at the 79th Venice Film Festival along with a number of Academy delegates at various important events to celebrate international cinema together.
In particular, on Tuesday, August 30 at 3 pm, at the Press Room (Palazzo del Casinò, Venice Lido), there will be a round table discussion entitled The values of cinema in global society, with the participation of the Academy's CEO Bill Kramer, the President of La Biennale Roberto Cicutto, the Artistic Director of the Venice International Film Festival Alberto Barbera, the President of Cinecittà Chiara Sbarigia, the CEO of Cinecittà Nicola Maccanico, and Mastercard's Country Manager Italy Michele Centemero. The panel will be moderated by the Variety correspondent Nick Vivarelli.
Also on Tuesday, August 30, Bill Kramer will participate at an exclusive event in partnership with Mastercard which will be held that evening at Misericordia (historic center of Venice). Then, on the evening of Wednesday, August 31, he will attend the opening Gala in the Sala Grande (Palazzo del Cinema). Lastly, on Thursday, September 1, at the Lido, Bill Kramer will meet with Academy members from around the world who are attending the festival, as well as with key representatives of international cinema.
Hola México Film Festival presented by Toyota, returns for its 14th annual edition on October 2 10, 2022 during Hispanic Heritage Month.
CHILEAN CINEMA POWERS UP WITH SUPPORT BY HOME DELEGATION
Undersecretary of the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage, Andrea Gutiérrez Vásquez, continues to support Chilean cinema for the second consecutive year. His ministry supported a market delegation "in this space that offers the entire production process, from the idea to the financial completion of the projects, so it is a great opportunity for our audiovisual industry". The international producer of CinemaChile, Ashley Salman, comments that the presence of Chile will have the support from CinemaChile, which supports the country’s audiovisual brand abroad.
Blanquita, the fourth film directed by Fernando Guzzoni will have its World Premiere in the Orizzonti section. Guzzoni, who is on the Lido for the first time, said, "It’s very complex to be selected, so we are proud that the film has been appreciated so well. And fast: we sent the copy and they said yes right away, and that’s not very usual. We are very proud and believe that it is an ideal place for the message of the film to begin to Hecirculate."comments that Blanquita "is a political thriller and represents a new exercise for me, which contrasts with other more naturalistic stories." In that sense, he explains that his first challenge was how to approach this universe without being conservative, "nor operating under the logic of political correctness, or with certain ways of thinking that generate self censorship." Far from a pretentious or arrogant exercise, "I understood that the film was a great parable about the black hole of impunity, where there are children who are victims of Producedinstitutions".by
Storytelling) will bring along their portfolio projects like Okonomiyaki, a fiction drama directed by Gabe Klinger and produced by Isabel Orellana, and Ancestral Secret VR, co directed by Francisca Silva and María José Díaz.
CHILE PREEMS BLANQUITA AT VENICE
A special showcase of two Mexican Films from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema: “Sombra Verde” (starring Ricardo Montalban himself and directed by Roberto Gabaldon and “La Mujer Murcielago” (Batwoman) a film that has been lost for decades directed by the renowned Rene
Cardona. Both films have been fully restored in HD and will play in the wonderful Montalban Theater rooftop in Los Angeles.
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HMFF will conclude with an award ceremony. Recognitions will include best director, best short film, and best audience award. The festival is comprised of the following sections: México Ahora, Documental, El Otro México, and Nocturno. México Ahora features the best of Mexican films released in recent years, covering every genre. Documental includes notable non fiction films made by Mexican filmmakers. El Otro Mexico highlights experiences of Mexicans rarely portrayed on screen, skillfully presenting perceptive narratives that challenge the status quo. The Nocturno section offers offbeat stories and horror films.
The Chilean delegation consists of five production companies, including: Fabula with Rocío Jadue; Quijote films with Giancarlo Nasi; Jirafa films with Bruno Bettati; Araucaria Cine with Isabel Orellana and Galgo Storytelling, represented by María José Diaz. CAIA delegates Isabel Orellana (Araucaria Cine) and María José Diaz (Galgo
"The excellent results,” commented Gutiérrez Vasquez, “encourage us to continue on this path, to give visibility and new opportunities to Chilean cinema".
Quijote films in co production with Varios Lobos (Mexico), Tarantula (Luxembourg), Bonne Pioche (France), Madants (Poland)
After last year's return to in person attendance, Hola México Film Festival (HMFF) once again will give viewers the opportunity to gather in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month by seeing some of the latest and classic films to have come from Mexico. The festival gathers more than 10,000 cinephiles to see 20 + films, many of them making their premiers with red carpet galas attended by the biggest actors and directors in Mexican cinema. Hola México Film Festival will feature 20+ films and 20 short films from its program Tomorrows Filmmakers Today.
HOLA MÉXICO
The ex Villa degli Autori on Viale Guglielmo Marconi
Swimming Pool Area of Excelsior Hotel
ARAB CINEMA FETES VENICE
DIRTY DIFFICULT DANGEROUS PARTY
Sunday, Sept 4, 7 PM
Moderator: Nick Vivarelli (Variety)
EXCLUSIVE COLLECTIONEYEWEARTHELIOS@MOSTRA'22
Wed, Aug 31, 10 PM
INVITATION ONLY
MAD FILMS RECEPTION
A new Key Player
NEOM IN SAUDI PANEL
Panelists: Wayne Borg (Managing Director, Media, Entertainment and Culture, NEOM), Filipe Martin Gomes (Head of Innovation Programs King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture, Ithra), Charlene Deleon Jones (Executive Director, Film AlUla), Abduljalil AlNasser (General Manager of Sector Development & Investment Attraction, Saudi Arabia Film Commission), Shivani Pandya (Managing Director, Red Sea International Film Festival), Abdulelah AlQurashi (Films Executive Producer, Sela)
ARAB PLATFORMS
Saturday, Sept. 3, 16:30 18:00pm Hotel Excelsior/Spazio Incontri & VPB SaudiLiveArabia,
Monday, Sept. 5, 14:30 17:30 Hotel Excelsior/Sala Poveglia VOD Market Day, Meet the Introduction:Streamers Marc Putman (President, Eurovod)
INVITATION ONLY
VOD streamers: Shahid, OSN+, WeShort, PZAZ TV, OUTtv, Filmdoo, TriArt, 7 Arts, Cinobo, MeJane/Mediachoice, Hoanzl, Kinow, NoKzeDoc ACCREDITATION REQUIRED
DIOR FENDI CELINE GIVENCHY LOEWE STELLA MCCARTNEY KENZO FRED
You are invited to visit the THELIOS Institutional Suite & Showroom presenting an exclusive selection our Maisons Eyewear Collections. Aug. 31st to Sept. 10th 2022 at the Excelsior Hotel, Lido, Venezia. To schedule a visit, please contact: Bertrand Legendre / JAZO PR or Anne Pauline Loncan Rigoir / THELIOS
Sunday, Sept. 4, 8:00 10:00 Isoloe Edipore
ACCREDITATION REQUIRED
THE VPB COCKTAIL (co sponsored by Arab Cinema Center)
INVITATION ONLY
VENICE BIENNALE REVIEW DAILY 31 AUGUST 2022 Page 6 (Continued)
Full Review
Thenoms.tone of high irony is set in the opening scenes, as riveting as they are appalling, in a montage of spectacular car accidents excerpted from films.
1 September 2022 day 2
Deborah Young, August 31, 2022
VENICE BIENNALE REVIEW DAILY
WHITE NOISE
VERDICT: Noah Baumbach and an inspired cast headlining Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig enjoyably bring Don DeLillo’s “unfilmable” novel about America in the Eighties to life with retro gusto, while straining to make it relevant.
COMPETITION
White Noise the film is funny, fast paced and full of absurd drama that ruefully reminds us we live in an even crazier world than the characters do. As a small town college prof and his wife, the well cast Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig capture the zeitgeist and manage to turn a lot of bumpy literary dialogue into meaningful exchanges, making it sure this Netflix release will find its audience. It proved a popular yet critically savvy choice to open Venice the first time a Netflix film has ruled opening night at a major film festival since Beckett opened Locarno last year especially in view of the fact that Baumbach’s celebrated Marriage Story, also starring Driver, bowed in Venice competition in 2019 before moving on to its six Oscar
White noise refers to constant, meaningless, distracting background noise, and in his prize winning 1985 novel, author Don DeLillo used the metaphor to paint a rich word picture of the search for meaning in an America littered with the trash of pop culture and unfettered consumerism. Writing
the screenplay during the pandemic, Noah Baumbach uncannily captures the spirit of the time, which after all was less than 40 years ago but much has changed and it is a challenge even for this talented auteur to update the neuroses and traumas of those days.
GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI
PRINCESS
THE MARCH ON ROME
Full Review
Jay Weissberg, August 31, 2022
Prolific documentarian Mark Cousins delivers perhaps his most focused work yet with The March on Rome, an at times frame by frame analysis of an early Italian Fascist propaganda film used to demonstrate the roots of fascism and their insidious growth over the past century up to the present day. With the stated intention of drawing parallels between then and now, the director successfully juggles a wealth of archival footage to show how Benito Mussolini’s infamous 1922 March on Rome was never a fait accompli, its unexpected success a spur for far right takeovers worldwide whose pattern book remains disturbingly unchanged. Inserted staged monologues with Alba Rohrwacher are wholly unnecessary and Cousins would have done well to put more emphasis on the continued presence no, legitimization in Italy of fascist extremists, but overall The March on Rome is a thought provoking, exceedingly well made work whose international aims will serve it well for worldwide sales.
Full Review
ORIZZONTI
The opening credits of Roberto De Paolis’ terrific Princess are designed like the introduction to a fairytale, with cute Disney like framings and curling tree branches, because fairy princesses are always connected in some way to a forest, right? Into the woods we go, only in this case, Princess is a Nigerian sex worker outside Rome and the woods are where she does her business. Residents and intrepid visitors to Italy have long been familiar with the sight of prostitutes (especially African and East European) working out of the way roadsides, but their marginalization both physically and in the Italian psyche has been pretty much complete until De Paolis entered their lives, delivering a spirited film that’s as honest as it is respectful. Working largely with women whose experiences mirror those on screen, the director more than fulfills the promise of his 2017 Quinzaine debut Pure Hearts with a second feature destined to enjoy worldwide distribution.
Jay Weissberg, August 31, 2022
VERDICT: Mark Cousins’ thought provoking examination of the rise of Fascism through a detailed analysis of a 1922 propaganda film that signaled the rise of a far right ideology whose insidious roots continue to find fertile ground.
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VERDICT: A rare fictionalized look at a Nigerian sex worker in Italy that celebrates its subject, flaws and all, with a spirited central performance and a laudable sensitivity destined to find welcoming arms worldwide
Noah Baumbach Director/Screenwriter/Producer
Noah Baumbach, as a writer director, is one of the distinctive comedy voices of recent American cinema. Although this comedy has evolved over time, from the early Woody Allen influenced Kicking and Screaming (1995) to his 2022 adaptation of novelist Don DeLillo’s black comic masterpiece, White Noise, it remains generally spiked with caustic anger, emotional alienation, and familial strife, while lifted by the impact of the creative collaboration of fellow writer and life partner Greta Gerwig. He’s one of the few American filmmakers to have grown up with two film critic parents the Village Voice’s Georgia Brown and The Partisan Review’s Jonathan Baumbach and this, as well as his love of the American indie filmmaking stylings of Jim Jarmusch, the New York comic styles of Whit Stillman and Woody Allen, and the screwball tradition of Howard Hawks, helped form Baumbach’s pointed, spikey voice. For his third completed feature, the heavily autobiographical The Squid and the Whale (2005), Baumbach enjoyed a sweep of the best screenplay award from the top three U.S. critics organizations (National Society of Film Critics, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, New York Film Critics Circle), as well as the National Board of Review. Full Bio
Powered by: Director of WHITE NOISE
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Reviewing the world of film from Rome, Paris, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Lagos, Montevideo, Berlin, Montreal
The platform made its debut on September 1, 2021, at the start of the Venice Film Festival. Since its launch, The Film Verdict has expanded its original team of critics to eleven reviewers based on five continents. Its founding critics include Deborah Young (who is TFV’s editor), Jay Weissberg, Boyd Van Hoeij and Stephen Dalton. Jordan Mintzer is among the original group of contributing writers, joined by Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, Clarence Tsui and Patricia Boero. Ben Nicholson came aboard to focus on short films, making TFV unique in reviewing short films individually and giving them the same attention as feature films. Most recently, acclaimed critics Carmen Gray and Kevin Jagernauth have been welcomed to the team as contributing
TFV CELERATES ITS 1ST YEAR
writers. TFV has also attached Kelly Jones as its International General Manager overseeing all aspects of The Film Verdict. Previously her professional career unfolded at The Hollywood Reporter and Variety where she led general production and festival dailies. “I can’t be prouder of the TFV team and the exhausting work each member contributed to make The Film Verdict a success in such a short time,” said Eric Mika, President and Publisher of TFV. I am also grateful to those who encouraged The Film Verdict from its inception; European Film Promotion, EUFCN, European
The first all reviews platform to focus on new international films from a trade perspective, The Film Verdict (TFV) was created one year ago to answer a pressing need in the international film community for top quality reviews of art films and festival films from around the world. It was conceived by a group of trade critics, including The Hollywood Reporter’s former International Film Editor Deborah Young, and made a reality by Eric Mika, the former Senior Vice President of Nielsen’s media group, former Publisher of The Hollywood Reporter and Vice President of International.Variety
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Film Academy, MAD Solutions, Arab Cinema, Vuulr, MILC, Cinando and the many, many others who embraced the efforts of TFV from day one and provided guidance. I would deeply like to thank the many film festivals who are directly responsible for the success and continued growth of The Film Verdict from Venice to Karlovy Vary to Munich and Sarajhevo and all the upcoming festivals this year, such as Oldenburg, San Sebastian, and Dox Leipzig and of course to the advertisers who understood the direct value of TFV and gave us a chance, we are very grateful,” said Mika.
There are no feathers in TÁR, U.S. director Todd Field’s first feature since 2006’s Little Children. Instead, we have a baton, as the protagonist is one of the world’s most famous and important conductors. But in more ways than one, this narratively baroque yet intellectually limpid drama does examine ideas of public torture and punishment in the world we live in today, especially
for artists who are, it seems, being cancelled left and right because of private behaviour, potentially discarding centuries of masterpieces that moved us deeply and that tell us something about where we came from and where we’re going. It’s risky and complex subject matter, and only an acting Goliath like Cate Blanchett could pull off a lead role this full of inherent contradictions.
Like its titular protagonist, TÁR is messy and yet extremely controlled and it helps immensely that someone as complex as Lydia Tár with just one “r,” unlike Béla is played by someone with Blanchett’s gift for uncomplicated complexity and centred calm, as audiences might otherwise find the character too off putting from the get go. At nearly 160 minutes, it still not a film that’s easy to market. That said, a major award at Venice and/or awards’ attention further down the line might convince arthouse patrons to call a babysitter and/or put on a mask and venture out to the cinema for a provocative new movie with some great classical music and performances.towering
VENICE BIENNALE REVIEW DAILY
COMPETITION
2 September 2022 day 3
TÁR
VERDICT: A finely controlled film about a woman of flawed greatness, portrayed by a rarely better Cate Blanchett. Boyd van Hoeij, September 1, 2022
Blanchett’s Lydia Tár née Linda, as we later find out is at the height of her fame when the film opens and she’s being interviewed on stage in New York. She has already recorded all of the symphonies of Mahler himself, like Tár… Full Review
VENICE BIENNALE REVIEW DAILY 2 SEPTEMBER 2022 Page 2
COMPETITION
VERDICT: Mexican master Alejandro G. Iñárritu (’Birdman’, ‘The Revenant’) takes time off for a very personal project with autobiographical and cinematic undertones.
Revenant, is very much on display in a long film that has the personal feel of lightly autobiography.fictionalized
BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS
Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths is
Deborah Young, September 1, 2022
The golden touch of filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, which brought him two consecutive Academy Awards as best director for Birdman and The
the rambling, dreamlike portrait of a famous Mexican journalist and documaker who is about to receive a major award from the gringos in Los Angeles. This event provides the protag with the occasion to ironically reexamine his life, loves, work, family, dreams and temperamentmercurialatindulgent length (over three hours with the credits), but in breathtaking shots lit like a metaphysical fairgrounds by cinematographer Darius Khondji. Set for release by Netflix in December, with a limited theatrical run planned in Mexico and the U.S., it is a film whose often dazzling craftsmanship should really be admired on the big screen with a state of the art sound system, where the director’s established fans will get the most joy. It bowed in Venice competition. Full Review
Peter’s cinephilia knew no bounds. He could enjoy a Hollywood blockbuster for what it was, or encourage me to sneak off with him to watch an Egyptian film at MIFED. But his two greatest attractions were for Scandinavian movies and Francis Ford Coppola. Decorated by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden with the Royal Order of the Polar Star for his service to Swedish culture, Peter directed the Nordic Film Festival and in 1982 published Ingmar Bergman: A Critical Biography (Continued on page 4)
ORIZZONTI EXTRA
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL
KUDOS TO PETER COWIE
It would be an unjust oversight not to salute a man who can mix an original Hemingway Martini as smoothly as he does art, cultural and commerce with a few strokes of the pen.
Who exactly is The Origin of Evil in this latest thriller from writer director Sébastien Marnier
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Is(Faultless)?ittheaging
Peter Cowie has been a staple at the Venice Film Festival, as well as at the Berlinale, Cannes and many more events. He has been a mentor in my career and a driving force in spreading an appreciation for world cinema through the International Film Guide (IFG) and, as a film historian, over 30 books he has written about cinema.
Peter began publishing articles about film in 1960 in an array of international newspapers, from The New York Times to Le Monde and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung while still in Magdalene College, Cambridge; he launched the first edition of the IFG in 1963 at the age of 23. International Film Guide was the first real global annual dedicated to regional films and film festivals, and it thrived under Peter’s leadership for more than forty years.
VERDICT: A wicked French thriller that goes overboard but does it in fun and clever ways, with nods to both Hitchcock and Chabrol.
patriarch, Serge (Jacques Weber), whose massive fortune has been built on greed and human suffering? His wife, Louise (Dominique Blanc) a cross between Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond and Edith Bouvlier Beale from Grey Gardens? Or how about, George (Dora Tillier), the conniving daughter trying to reap maximum profit out of her dad’s estate? Or maybe it’s the maid, Agnès (Véonique Ruggia Saura), who hails from a long line of questionable servants seen in various Hitchcock movies and other whodunits, including all the Agatha Christie knockoffs, and to which The Origin of Evil feels like something of a French homage? Full Review
Although Peter’s guidebooks are many (he launched International Cycling Guide, International Running Guide, International Music Guide, International TV and Video Guide and The Scandinavian Guide), it is his passion for movies and his achievements in the field that honor him most.
Jordan Mintzer, September 1, 2022
Todd Field Director/Screenwriter/Producer
Todd Field (birthname: William Todd Field) is a fascinating case of a serious actor who became a full time filmmaker, and not just any filmmaker, but a writer director of exceptional quality. Even though he has made only three features in 21 years, each has received either great acclaim or major, international platforms with world class actors, adapting major fiction writers like Andre Dubus and Tom Perotta. Field’s third feature, TÁR (2022), starring Cate Blanchett, was in competition for the Golden Lion in its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Full Bio
KUDOS TO PETER COWIE
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Cate Blanchett (birthname: Catherine Elise Blanchett) is in the top ranks of screen actors of her generation, and as a leading figure in the second generation of the wave of Australian cinema, she combines the brilliance of a Judy Davis with the star power of a Nicole Kidman. Like certain British and Australian film stars (and unlike the vast majority of her American peers), Blanchett has continued to hone her craft on the stage, consistently performing in the theater from her professional debut 1992 to the present, and remains a major Australian theatrical figure on stage... Full Bio
(Continued)
Cate Blanchett Actor
He went on to write over thirty books, including The Godfather Book, The Apocalypse Now Book, John Ford and the American West, and The Godfather: Official Motion Picture Archives. His latest book, Japanese Cinema. A Personal Journey was published by Sone Bridge Press in June
Peter’s youthful gusto for life and desire to savor every moment was evident when we traveled together around the globe, his pace always faster than mine, his thirst deeper and his humor wittier than the most classic Cantabrigian comic As international publishing director of Variety, he excelled in defending world cinema in the lion’s den of Hollywood, but at the same time he knew how to blend American cinema with French over a fine dinner at the Martinez in Cannes, by bringing a case of Coppola’s wine to the table
Peter’s influence even extends to the creation of The Film Verdict. The need for an international review platform, which spurred the creation of TFV, is as important today as the IFG was in 1962 Kudos, Peter, you are a giant in Cinemaland. Cent’Anni.
Eric Mika, Publisher
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Azerbaijani actress Tahmina Rafaella is the writer director of Banu, named after the film’s protagonist. Rafaella previously wrote and acted in Inner City, and directed a short film, A Woman. In Banu, she also plays the main role, a difficult challenge for a first time feature director, but one she handles with understated dignity.
Zaur Shafiyev plays Banu’s husband Javid, delivering the right mix of charm and violence that so often explains how domestic violence can remain invisible to outsiders. When Banu asks for a divorce, Javid demands full custody of their young son Ruslan (Emin Askarov). Banu begins a desperate search for potential court witnesses to her husband’s abuse, which has been kept secret, but fear of reprisals and prejudice keeps them from rallying to her defense. Her own mother inadvertently puts her at risk, and her mother in law fiercely takes her son’s side. Yet Banu persists and challenges the status quo, and the tension grows as the date for the court hearing approaches. Full Review
Patricia Boero, September 1, 2022
BIENNALECINEMACOLLEGE
This year’s Venice Biennale College Cinema section is showcasing four films that were developed through its workshops and funding. Among them are two works that deal with a woman’s struggle to cope with separation from loved ones: Italy’s Come le Tartarughe and Azerbaijan’s Banu
VERDICT: War and patriarchy deprive Azerbaijani women of their sons in an intimate, courageous drama that intertwines personal and political plot lines, directed and acted by first time director Tahmina Rafaella.
BANU
VENICE BIENNALE REVIEW DAILY 2 SEPTEMBER 2022 Page 5
DIRTY, DIFFICULT, DANGEROUS
VERDICT: Paris based Lebanese filmmaker Wissam Charaf's second feature takes a delicately droll and deadpan approach in depicting social malaise in Beirut, as seen by a migrant Ethiopian maid and a bomb surviving Syrian refugee.
Clarence Tsui, August 31, 2022
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The photographer in question is Baptiste (Pablo Pauly, wholesome and cute) and he’s really just an amateur photographer, as the curly ginger works as a floor supervisor in an electronics store. His girlfriend Samia (Hafsia Herzi, the biggest star in the cast) is a nurse who still studies while she often works nights, which allows Baptiste to hang out with some drag queens he meets on the street, close to the free HIV test facility on wheels that Samia works for. Full Review
Boyd van Hoeij, September 1, 2022
A young photographer discovers the world of French drag queens in Three Nights a Week (Trois nuits par semaine), the uplifting and festive opening film of this year’s Venice Critics’ Week. But even though Florent Gouëlou’s
CRITIC’S WEEK
Mention films about refugees in Lebanon, and the mind inevitably conjures up images of gritty drama oozing devastation, doom and disorder. But that’s not what drives Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous. Revolving around a pair of star crossed, cast out lovers in Beirut who travel to the Lebanese Syrian borderlands, Wissam Charaf’s second feature subverts expectations with its reliance on static shots, tableau like mise en scene and deadpan comedy, with all this unfolding in old school Academy ratio.
GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI
different understanding of his own sexuality. That said, this professionally accoutred drama should travel to LGBTQ events and especially those geared to mixed audiences, as this is the kind of gentle as a lamb fare that young queers can take their supportive families along to without the risk of anyone getting uncomfortable.
debut feature has a high feel good factor, it is also a rather tame and predictable tale of a supposedly straight man whose discovery of the drag world and his own amorous feelings towards one of the queens leads him towards a
VERDICT: A supposedly straight man finds himself in a drag wonderland that feels strangely sanitised in Florent Gouëlou's debut feature.
THREE NIGHTS A WEEK
Despite spending the past two decades covering war zones for French TV channels, the Paris based Charaf avoids realism and instead evokes Aki Kaurismäki –an approach he already hinted at in Heaven Sent (Tombé du ciel), his first fiction feature that bowed in Cannes in 2016. Full Review
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Festival. The Siam Sinonietta appear in the film TAR, in competition at the Venice Film TheFestival.exclusive
SHOUT LONDON RAISES THE VOLUME ON MENTAL HEALTH
SHOUT LONDON is brand new festival that is set to re energize London with an open minded conversation about mental health, all through the prism of film and the creative arts. Spearheaded by veteran film industry executive, Carey Fitzgerald, Managing Director of Silver Mountain Productions, whose long standing involvement with The Ashford Place Mental Health Film and Arts motivated her to explore ways of combining her own industry expertise with the charity’s pioneering work supporting the most marginalized and vulnerable in Ashfordsociety.Place
presale for this Gala Event will start on August 4, while the ticketing for the rest of the 2022 program will start at the end of August.
to cope, with reduced face to face engagement against a stretched system exposing existing and growing inequalities.’ He continues. Ashford Place is incredibly proud to support SHOUT LONDON, which looks towards redressing the balance, offering a platform that encourages publicly focused conversation, inspired by honest depictions of mental health in film and the creative arts’.
CEO, Danny Maher, who has worked closely with Fitzgerald in developing SHOUT LONDON, highlights That SHOUT LONDON will bring unseen and often poorly understood mental health issues into more open discourse, saying: ‘The Covid lockdown has had a significantly negative impact on public mental health and the ability of services
In the meantime, Michelle Collins, star of stage and screen, is announced as festival patron. ‘I am proud to be the Patron of Shout London every family is affected by mental health of some kind and I’m delighted that Shout London is opening the conversation, as too often the subject is Showcasinghidden.atThe Kiln Cinema in Kilburn and at The Crown Hotel London, the free to attend inaugural edition of SHOUT LONDON: The Ashford Place Mental Health Film and Arts Festival will be held on October 10th and 11th to coincide with World Mental Health Day. The deadline for submissions is September 6th with the full programme announcement following shortly after.
Encompassing film, music, theatre, dance and poetry, SHOUT LONDON is being curated by Silver Mountain Productions, who, along with The Kiln, also act as sponsors with Carey Fitzgerald as Festival Director, Ronald de Neef as Programme Director and Dominique Murphy de Neef as Marketing Director.
SIAM
OLDENBERGRETURNSSINFONIETTATOFORANENCORE
After last year's spectacular performance of the Thai Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Siam Sinfonietta, both onscreen in their film »The Maestro« and live on stage in Oldenburg, the world renown conductor and his orchestra are returning to the Oldenburg International Film AtFestival.aGala Concert in Oldenburg's magnificent Lamberti Church, on Saturday, September 17th, the Maestro will conduct a symphonic journey through the iconic scores of one of the greatest film composers of all time, Bernard Herrmann. With film scores spanning from Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Psycho to the finest of New Hollywood cinema, such as Martin Scorsese's »Taxi Driver« and Brian de Palma's »Obsession«, Herrmann has created cinema history. Somtow himself counts him among the most important influences on his own work: »If the film industry had not happened, Herrmann would have evolved into one of the great opera composers of the 20th Incentury.«addition to this Symphonic Cinema Event, Somtow and the Siam Sinfonietta will once again of fer a taste of their mastery at the Opening Night Gala and will be present throughout the entire
Egyptian film to officially participate in the short film competition at Venice International Film Festival.
From September 1 to 3, 2022, the third edition of the Venice Architecture Film Festival, organized by the cultural association ArchiTuned, returns in conjunction with the International Film Festival La Biennale di Venezia.
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During the festival’s free screening evenings in Venice at the island of San Servolo, an evocative location between St. Mark’s Square and the Venice Lido, home of the Venice Biennale Cinema 2022, cinematic works (short documentaries, shorts and medium length films, docu films, animations, experimental films) on the theme of architecture and urban space will be presented. In
Kawthar Younis is a filmmaker based in Cairo, Egypt. Known for her documentary feature film “A Present from the Past,’’ which was set a record for audience demand in the Egyptian cinemas, breaking the record for most running weeks in the theaters. She works as a producer for films, mini series and TV commercials. Her latest short film "Sahbety / My Girl Friend" is the first Egyptian film to officially participate in the short film competition at Venice International Film Festival. Kawthar is also co founder of the inaugural Rawiyat Sisters in Film.
CINEMA ARCHITECTUREMEETS
CAIRO SHORT IN COMPETITIONVENICE
My Girlfriend, directed by Kawthar Younis is the first
addition to the screening of the short films that are the subject of the competition, the program includes the presentation of a film review curated by Archituned in collab oration with a wider network of professionals in the field, a.o. la Maison de l’Architecture of Haute Savoie (France), NCCA National Commission for Culture and theArts in the Philippines, the Berlage Center for Advanced Stud ies in Architecture and Urban Design, l’Università della Svizzera Italiana Accademia di Architettura.
Full Review
Some directors seem trapped in teenage stories because they either think they’re “down” with the kids or haven’t come to grips with the fact that they’re no longer in that category themselves but Guadagnino’s interest comes from a more generous place.
3 September 2022 day 4
BONES AND ALL
COMPETITION
VENICE BIENNALE REVIEW DAILY
Cannibalism as a metaphor for queerness in its most all embracing form is the basis for Bones and All, Luca Guadagnino’s love fused exploration of outsider angst set against a detail perfect 1980s America. Based on Camille De Angelis’ 2015 young adult novel, the script by regular collaborator David Kajganich (Suspiria, A Bigger Splash) makes no bones about how it wants to be read, realized by Guadagnino into a visually rich, deceptively straightforward story whose horror elements, while hardly underplayed, are conceived as instinctive and inescapable rather than something to shock. The director’s uncanny sensitivity to his surroundings, whether outdoor or interior spaces, is once again on full display and it’s something of surprise to grasp that this is his first film shot in the States given how thoroughly he knows the psychological impact of each location. With well entrenched roots going back to They Live By Night and any
VERDICT: Luca Guadagnino again proves his understanding of the yearning for a fellow soul that defines all feelings of difference in this beautifully played road trip movie which uses cannibalism as metaphor. Jay Weissberg, September 2, 2022 number of recent “art house” horror films using the genre to toy with concepts of transgression and belonging, Bones and All will be avidly consumed by international audiences, not least thanks to the charismatic coupling of hot newcomer Taylor Russell (Waves) and Timothée Chalamet.
VERDICT: An eye popping, eardrum piercing action film in which the more serious social and mythical elements are a little on the nose. Boyd van Hoeij, September 2, 2022
An adrenaline rush thrill ride, a social drama about the easily ignited French banlieues and a Greek tragedy about four brothers, Athena from France based writer director Romain Gavras (The World Is Yours) is all those things, with varying degrees of success. Netflix’s first French feature in competition in Venice is most successful as a heart pounding action piece, using long and carefully choreographed sequences shots to take us right into the war between an angry and frustrated generation set off by the death of a young boy and the riot police, who have to lay siege to an entire council estate to try and get one of their kidnapped men back. As a drama about the tensions in the neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Paris (and other major cities), it doesn’t tell us anything new or even dig all that deep, despite having been co written by Les Misérables writer director Ladj Ly. And as a Greek tragedy, finally, the film is at times rather obvious, starting with its title, which is the name of the fictional place where the events unfold. Even so, this looks and sounds spectacular on the big screen, so a Venice award isn’t out of the question.
The film opens with the announcement of a tragedy as 11 year old Idir died after being brutally abused by two policemen (or men dressed as policemen). His death sets the Athena cité where he came from literally and figuratively on fire, as Idir’s older brother Karim (Sami Slimane) takes advantage of his peers’ marginalised status and general dissatisfaction with how the French state has treated them to stage an all out attack on a police press conference about the incident
… Full Review
COMPETITION
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ATHENA
A COUPLE
Paul Schrader Receives Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award
Jordan Mintzer, September 2, 2022
non fiction filmmakers or simply one of the greatest living filmmakers, period.
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VERDICT: A monologue on love, marriage, devotion and utter deception that will play best to fans of either Leo Tolstoy or Frederick Wiseman perhaps to both.
So let’s allow him a little digression from his typically absorbing, three to four hour documentaries with the modest and very artsy, A Couple (Un couple), an hour long, nearly nonstop monologue performed by actress and co writer Nathalie Boutefeu, who recites various texts from the writings of Leo Tolstoy’s long scorned wife, CertainlySophia.
not for everyone, and more like a piece of filmed theatre than a plain old film, Wiseman’s second stab at “fiction’ quotation marks are needed because there are aspects… Full Review
With 43 documentary features to his name, some of them among the more major works of cinema chronicling American life and institutions of the past half century, Frederick Wiseman, at 92 years old and counting, remains one of the greatest living
COMPETITION
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Paul Schrader (birthname: Paul Joseph Schrader) is one of the essential American writer directors of his generation, and one of the few major American filmmakers with a grounding in film criticism. If there’s a good argument for the auteur theory in practice, it may be Paul Schrader, whose screenplays and films as writer director are consistently infused with a uniquely dark, existential and sometimes Calvinist inspired point of view, usually about men reaching their Dark Nights of the Soul. Long a favorite of international cinephiles and too often spurned by the Hollywood film establishment (reflected in the fact that he was only nominated for an Oscar in 2017 for his script for First Reformed, his 31st film as either writer, director or both), Schrader received a Career Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival in 2022.
Paul Schrader’s first real mark on cinema was as a critic (for such Los Angeles based publications as Cinema magazine and the Los Angeles Free Press) and author of the seminal 1972 book, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, which introduced many readers to the masterpieces of Yasujiro Ozu and Carl Theodor Dreyer, and remains an essential text on three of cinema’s most important artists. Full Bio
Director/Screenwriter/Author/Film Critic
VAI VENEZIA
PADRE PIO
VERDICT: Abel Ferrara’s total misfire aims to merge the story of a 1920 class related massacre with the contemporaneous crisis of faith of Italy’s most popular 20th century saint, but the poor script, bad acting and overall lack of cohesion make this just a time waster.
GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI
Padre Pio may not be a household name outside Italy, but on the peninsula his image is inescapable: behind café cash registers, in taxis and trucks, on countless tombstones where his face replaces that of
What are we to make of the mess that is Abel Ferrara’s Padre Pio? Linking those two names is already bizarre, and yet Ferrara appears to truly have found religion in the guise of Italy’s most popular and questionable 20th century saint, a man many members of the Church hierarchy of his day, including Pope John XXIII, knew was not what he claimed. This isn’t a biopic though in fact, it’s not clear what Ferrara means for it to be since he’s attempted to graft Padre Pio’s early wrestling with his faith onto a 1920 massacre in his southern Italian hometown. Somewhere there’s supposed to be a connection between Padre Pio’s “man of the people” image and the fight between evil landowners and rabble rousing Socialists, but the links are, to be generous, purely spiritual. Shia LaBeouf’s equally unlikely casting as the future saint will generate a certain buzz though very few sales.
Jay Weissberg, September 2, 2022 the deceased. Like Ché Guevara it’s almost always the same picture, grizzled and stern in his Capuchin robes, his hands swaddled in bloody bandages as a sign that he received Jesus’ wounds. Full Review
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BOBI WINE: GHETTO PRESIDENT
VERDICT: Midlife crisis meets coming of ager in this sensitive, elegant first film set in Rome and directed by Italian actress Monica Dugo. Patricia Boero, September 2, 2022
Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, September 2, 2022
OUT COMPETITIONOF
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BIENNALECINEMACOLLEGE
LIKE TURTLES
In this chronicle of a bourgeois family crisis, Dugo plays Tina, a conformist wife and mother who acts as general manager and secretary to her family’s needs, attending to meals and school schedules and making sure the household runs smoothly Full Review
the artist in 2014 before the madness began, freestyling for a bunch of people in an Ugandan ghetto. We move on to 2016 and then to 2017, when he gets a political seat as a member of Aparliament.keyscene
comes when there is a vote to extend Yoweri Museveni’s term as president (he has been in power since 1986.) There is no real suspense to the process, if you have followed the news, but the scene succeeds in generating tension. At the end, it is a landslide for the incumbent. The yes men get feted; others get disciplinary actions. You begin to understand the brazenness of Museveni’s moves despite the man’s own stodginess.
In an effort to bring new voices to world cinema, the Venice Biennale College Cinema initiative, now in its tenth year, offers workshops and financial help to first time directors. Veteran screen and TV actor Monica Dugo, who has appeared in over thirty titles from dramas to comedies, and beloved TV series like Commisario Montalbano and Don Matteo, makes a bright feature film debut in Like Turtles (Come le tartarughe), one of the four College feature films screening at this year’s festival. Applying her experience portraying characters, she knows how to eloquently reveal their flaws and virtues.
It seems just right that the age of social media is the age that has brought us a selection of the African political documentaries. There was Softie, which showed at Sundance. A daughter of one of South Sudan’s political elite made one that went to Berlin. Now, taking a bow in Venice, there is Bobi Wine: Ghetto President, set mainly in Uganda and featuring the “popstar MP” Bobi Wine (real name Robert WeKyagulanyi).firstsee
Italy has a distinguished cadre of women filmmakers (Francesca Archibugi, Alice Rohrwacher and many more) but still suffers the same gender imbalance as the world film industry. Legendary Italian film director Lina Wertmüller (who died recently at age 93) reigned supreme from the Sixties onwards and was the first woman director nominated for an Academy Award, for Seven Beauties. Her films had a brilliant, savage edge to them, mixing personal and political storylines. Dugo’s style is more subdued and her wit is softer, but she still has a lot to say about the submissive role women play in modern day Italy.
After the bill passes, Bobi Wine becomes brazen himself, openly standing against candidates that Museveni supports. Naturally he is arrested, but not after his driver is killed. Full Review
VERDICT: Whatever its structural deficiencies, Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp's documentary is an important document of political tyranny in this decade.
The Secret in Their Eyes’ Ricardo Darín, who earlier played a fictional Argentinian president for Mitre in The Summit. But whereas that latter film never quite found its groove, Argentina, 1985 rises to the occasion magnificently, dramatising an important moment in the country’s history with lucidity, dark humour and clear dramatic stakes. The result is Mitre’s most classically made feature to date and likely also his most successful box office hit at home, though in the rest of the world, the film will be but one of many on the platform of co producing
Boyd van Hoeij, September 3, 2022
ARGENTINA, 1985
VENICE BIENNALE REVIEW DAILY
4 September 2022 day 5
VERDICT: Santiago Mitre's drama about the Trial of the Juntas does this important milestone in Argentina's history justice.
COMPETITION
Right from his debut feature, 2011’s The Student, Argentinian writer director Santiago Mitre (Paulina, The Summit) has explored the intersection of politics and the private and personal. For his fourth film, Argentina, 1985, he has made a drama not only based on true events but one of his country’s most famous political events: the 1985 Trial of the Juntas, during
ThoughAmazon.there
which a group of army generals from the dictatorship era which only ended in 1983 stood trial for war crimes in a civilian court. Co writer Mariano Llinás and the writer director’s way into the material is Julio César Strassera, the public prosecutor who was basically forced to take on this unenviable task. It helps that he’s played by one of the country’s best actors,
have been a lot of films that have tackled the issue of the desaparecidos or disappeared in South America, this is the first dramatisation of what’s been referred to as “the most important trial since Nuremberg,” with Strassera (Darín) given just a few months to gather undeniable evidence Full Review
COMPETITION
ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED
VERDICT: Artist Nan Goldin’s activism in holding the Sackler family accountable for the opioid crisis is seen as a natural extension of her rebellious, freely lived and proudly messy life in Laura Poitras’ well structured, powerful documentary.
Full Review
The Sackler family’s criminal responsibility for the opioid crisis is well known, but less familiar is artist Nan Goldin’s involvement in holding them accountable. Laura Poitras (CitizenFour) weaves that story in an intimate collaboration with Goldin, who in typical Goldin fashion forthrightly lays out the ups and downs of a life we thought was well documented, until now. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is a documentary one expects will check all the usual boxes: a David and Goliath story ending with the kind of satisfied exhilaration that comes from seeing a worthy cause triumph. While there is that element, Poitras’ aims are more penetrating, using the Sackler crusade as a way of delving into Goldin’s life and teasing out the sources of her commitment to living openly, proudly, and with no excuses. Festivals have already nabbed the title, which will certainly find a welcoming home in rep houses and streaming.
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Jay Weissberg, September 3, 2022
Following a prologue showing Goldin and fellow activists staging a die in at the Temple of Dendur pavilion (then known as the Sackler Wing) of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Poitras divides the documentary into six sections, each starting with a chapter from Goldin’s life and ending with her involvement with P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), a group dedicated to discrediting the Sacklers, owners of Purdue Pharma.
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After two years of virtual editions, the Venice Film Festival’s VR and immersive experiences sidebar is back at its usual location, the Lazzaretto Vecchio (literally a stone’s throw from the Lido, reachable in less than a minute by boat). And it’s back with a new name: no longer Venice VR, but Venice Immersive. “We felt it was an appropriate choice to convey the full spectrum of what we do”, explains Michel Reilhac, the section’s co curator. “This way, we emphasize the creative side of the artform, rather than the tech.” That’s a very apt description of what the revamp entails, as a visit to the Lazzaretto emphasizes the extent to which the program goes beyond the stereotypical image of VR spectators just passively sitting in a corner and wearing a headset. The physical space is important for the virtual experience, as shown in projects like Rencontre(s), where the participant embarks on a multisensory trip into the past, with a mixture of real and digital props and cast members. Equally impressive is Framerate: Pulse of the Earth, which has no VR elements at all: it’s a timelapse, created with 3D scans of two different areas in the UK (one in Norfolk, the other in Glasgow), with the results playing on eight screens simultaneously to show how the environment is irreversibly changing.
For the first time, The Film Verdict will be reviewing experiences in virtual reality (VR) which have been selected for the festival’s Venice Immersive sidebar. Senior TFV critic Boyd Van Hoeij, who examines VR projects for the Luxembourg Film Fund, will review a selection of what's on offer and identify the latest trends in VR. Look for them on thefilmverdict.com.
VR FILMS
The Immersive Side of Venice
While festivals in the U.S. have started to embrace immersive works (Sundance, SXSW and Tribeca all have dedicated sections), European events are still on the fence, or at least not as fully committed as Venice is. (Cannes did have a VR installation in 2017, made by one Alejandro González Iñárritu.) So what sets the Lido apart? (Continued on page 4)
Typeman by Keisuke Itoh
Deborah Young, September 3, 2022
OUT OF COMPETITION FICTION
Max Borg
“Transgender people are especially happy about it”, explains Reilhac, “because you’re represented only by your avatar, and the rules state no one can ask you about your physical identity. People are even using VRChat for therapy sessions nowadays, so the social side of this experience is also undergoing an interesting evolution.” Look for TFV’s coverage of Venice Immersive for more information.
(Continued…)
Kindred by Bambou Kenneth
MASTER GARDENER
“The Biennale, of which the film festival is only one branch, is a multidisciplinary umbrella,” says co curator Liz Rosenthal. “They’re open to the idea of performance and exhibition, and it’s been like that since we first started discussing the idea of having a VR space, back in 2015.”
VERDICT: A timely occasion to foreground the growing role of American extremists like the Proud Boys is largely manqué in Paul Schrader’s unconvincing story about a marked man trying to redeem himself, starring Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver.
Beyond the festival context, immersive reality is making a name for itself in social settings, too, with previously unforeseen benefits for people who have difficulty interacting with the outside world. The curators are particularly enthusiastic about VRChat, a virtual world platform they used extensively during the pandemic.
This year, the jury consists of the previous edition’s winners, making it an entirely peer to peer experience, compared to when the likes of John Landis were invited to preside over the affair. Says Reilhac: “That was an interesting one, because Landis, being unfamiliar with that world, came at it from the perspective of a filmmaker. His questions, though far removed from what the artform is, were very interesting.”
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While on the Venice Lido to receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, master screenwriter and film director Paul Schrader also premiered his new film Master Gardener out of competition. Set on what looks like a Southern plantation that has been converted into a prize winning garden estate by the aging lady of the manor Mrs. Haverhill (played by a classy but shrewish Sigourney Weaver) and lovingly tended by a professional gardening staff headed by the enigmatic Narvel Roth (Australian actor Joel Edgerton), it is the perfect set up for a succulent Southern drama but one that soon, alas, reveals itself to be a handful of dry dust.
The hero of the tale is the tough gardener, a man who knows everything about plants and explains their history in voiceover, but whose haunted eyes and evasive remarks about his origins makes it clear that he has a backstory to tell. This is soon revealed in spotty flashbacks that show him firing guns with a paramilitary group and executing the assassination orders of a vicious white haired leader. Full Review
The Immersive Side of Venice
Boyd van Hoeij, September 3, 2022
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The most interesting thing about Lifshitz’s work here is the titular subject, a place in the Catskills where men who liked to dress up as women and trans women came together to be able to be themselves without having to worry about any prying eyes from their families, acquaintances, colleagues or the world at large. That such a place existed at all is a miracle and it’s equally miraculous that a whole underground support system was in place that allowed people who were looking for it to find an oasis such as this.
CASA SUSANNA
GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI
VERDICT: Sébastien Lifshitz's latest documentary explores a U.S. hideout for cross dressing men and trans women but beyond the subject itself, which is interesting, not much of the director's usual rigour can be found.
Full Review
documentary work focused on France, where he shot beautiful films like The Invisibles, Bambi, Adolescents and, most recently, Little Girl, the titular hideout of Casa Susanna was actually tucked away in the hills of the Catskills in New York State. Made for Arte in Europe and PBS in the U.S., the feature does feel noticeably more television ready than some of his other non fiction work, though the lack of a cinematic edge won’t be much of a bother for LGBTQ festivals starved for content about both queer history and trans protagonists.
A rare refuge for cross dressing men and trans women in the 1950s and 1960s is the subject of Casa Susanna, the latest documentary from French director Sébastien Lifshitz. While his previous
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GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI
A physical education teacher in 1988 northern England struggles to keep her sexual orientation a secret when one of her pupils also turns out to be a lesbian in the engrossing drama Blue Jean. Shot in textured 16mm, this feature debut from writer director Georgia Oakley might at times be mistaken for a kitchen sink drama of Thatcher era misery but Oakley thankfully includes some very intense and intensely cinematic peeks into her protagonist’s mind as well, which transform this from a realistic, issue based drama into a more complex psychological portrait. Besides queer festival showcases, which are a given, this impressive calling card stands a decent chance of finding wider cross over visibility for this new voice in British cinema.
At the start of the film, Jean (a strong Rosy McEwen, The Alienist) seems to have things more or less sorted out. She has a decent job as a PE teacher at a local school somewhere in northern England and enjoys life with her girlfriend, Viv (Kerrie Hayes, delivering a f you performance with gusto). With her shaved head and prominent piercings, Viv would have more problems passing as straight than Jean does, whose sole cosmetic indulgence is bleaching her short ‘do. Not that Viv wants to be mistaken for a heterosexual, which for Jean is a practically a necessity. Viv, who has a more radical outlook on life, finds this hard to stomach and she doesn’t quite seem to (want to) understand that for Jean, her job is part of her identity as well as her livelihood. Full Review
BLUE JEAN
VERDICT: Georgia Oakley's debut feature is at times a little clumsy but it's also the work of an interesting new voice in British cinema with a flair for expressive images.
Boyd van Hoeij, September 3, 2022
Full Review
THE WHALE
5 September 2022 day 6
VENICE BIENNALE REVIEW DAILY
Darren Aronofsky’s films are an eclectic lot, spinning wildly from studio Biblical mash ups like Noah to the outer fringes of psychological horror in the hard to describe mother! The Whale is something else again. Based on Samuel D. Hunter’s play (and screenplay) about a man so
VERDICT: In a career best performance, Brendan Fraser turns Darren Aronofsky’s apartment bound drama about an unhappy English teacher crippled by obesity and his daughter’s distance into a classic piece of filmmaking whose emotions are truly immense.
Deborah Young, September 4, 2022
realism of the drama, they will overlook the paucity of scenery. And there is that: the action, set entirely inside the man’s apartment, is further restricted to a few bookish rooms, augmenting empathy for his physical limitations. Not to mention a perfectly square screen ratio, which has the constant subliminal effect of compressing space for the roving handheld camerawork. And yet the film doesn’t feel actually Thisclaustrophobic.iscertainly an award demanding performance by Brendan Fraser, who has never had such a stage from which to project his intelligence and humanity. Wrapped head to toe in a latex prosthetic costume of flesh of impressive proportions, his dignified English teacher Charlie has the warmth and kindness of John Hurt’s Elephant Man, while his grotesque appearance repulses strangers and even his own daughter.
Even people who are normally allergic to filmed theater will be so caught up in the physical
COMPETITION
obese he can barely stand up, yet so positive towards the life that is slipping away from him that his imminent death matters terribly, it grabs the viewer by the heart for two devastating hours.
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Jay Weissberg, September 4, 2022
IMMENSITY
COMPETITION
VERDICT: Penélope Cruz is a joy as a 1970s mother whose free spirit is frozen by her husband’s stereotyped insensitivity, yet other elements of Emanuele Crialese’s film, which is equally focused on the daughter’s certainty she was born the wrong gender, are less transcendent.
Whenever some old fogey whines “they don’t make movie stars like they used to,” just point them in the direction of Penélope Cruz. Thirty years in cinema and she remains a joy, not just for a beauty that classes her with the great screen goddesses, but for serious acting chops and an inner glow that infallibly transmits a penetrating warmth. Were it not for Cruz, Immensity would be a much weaker film, notwithstanding terrific cinematography and an impressive attention to 1970s detail. The problem with Emanuele Crialese’s long awaited return after eleven years is the utterly predictable script and a sensation that the handling of its gender questioning young co protagonist feels dated. Perhaps that seems odd to say given this is a period film, but for a new movie to tackle gender identity, it needs to offer some glimpse into the struggle that’s more than skin deep, and such insight is lacking. Yes, it sets this conflict side by side with classic stereotyped male female roles neurotic 1970s housewife with no outlet versus emotionally unavailable cheating husband yet that too offers nothing new. Immensity is still likely to be quite popular, but the enticing enormity of its title, apart from Cruz and Gergely Pohárnok’s rich visuals, is pretty limited. Full Review
VENICE BIENNALE REVIEW DAILY 5 SEPTEMBER 2022 Page 3
COMPETITION
VERDICT: Rebecca Zlotowski's latest drama stars Viriginie Efira ('Benedetta') and incisively explores issues of parenthood and generational transmission. Boyd van Hoeij, September 4, 2022
OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN
French domestic drama Other People’s Children (Les Enfants des autres) isn’t about children so much as it is about what it’s like to date someone who has a young child. In this particular story, a woman has started dating a divorced man with a young daughter. It’s a curious position to be in, as the child is of course still very attached to her mother but at the same time, its unavoidable she’ll see a lot of her father’s new girlfriend. It’s fertile ground for a drama about the weird form of substitute parenthood that a childless woman approaching 40 finds herself investing time and emotions in, even as she never really asked for it when she first met her partner. While the film starts off as a relatively straightforward relationship drama, it develops into something more singular as things progress, with a pitch perfect coda neatly wrapping things up. Though perhaps too intimate to win awards at festivals such as Venice, the latest film from Rebecca Zlotowski (An Easy Girl, Grand Central) should at least do well domestically. Full Review
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“Nezouh” is an Arabic noun for displacement, of a soul, of water, of people, as the opening titles explain, and in the film the concept is meant to encompass the first and last of those definitions. 14 year old Zeina (Hala Zein) is the last of four daughters to remain in the familial nest provided by her parents, Motaz (Samir Almasri) and Hala (Kinda Aloush).
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Powered by: Darren DirectorAronofsky,ofTHEWHALE
Director/Screenwriter/Producer
NEZOUH
Jay Weissberg, September 4, 2022
Darren Aronofsky may average only one feature every three years as a writer director (and also, sometimes, as producer), but, since his feature debut in 1998 with Pi, his movies have generated intense discussion, controversy and acclaim for the sheer cinematic provocations embedded in his dramas about extremely flawed and damaged characters. Aronofsky’s success came early, first with being a finalist in the Student Academy Awards for his short, Supermarket Sweep (1991), made as his thesis film in Harvard’s film program, and then winning the best director award in Sundance’s U.S. Dramatic Features section for his feature debut about an obsessive mathematician, Pi (1998), with co writer and lead (and Harvard pal) Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, and Ben Shenkman. Aronofsky’s psychological interests turned to drug addiction in the nerve jangling adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.’s book (with Selby as co screenwriter), Requiem for a Dream (2000), with Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans, and Christopher McDonald, and premiering out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Burstyn earned a well deserved Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her remarkable portrayal of addicted Sara. Full Bio
VERDICT: Touches of magical realism aren’t enough to hold together this well meaning yet clumsy story of an adolescent girl in war torn Damascus whose father refuses to accept that changed circumstances make his pose as the family guardian irrelevant.
As bombs fall in Damascus, a father refuses to relinquish his role as custodian and provider in Soudade Kaadan’s Nezouh, a film brimming with good ideas but lacking the filmmaking wherewithal to make it work. As with her uneven debut The Day I Lost My Shadow, winner of Venice’s 2018 Lion of the Future, the director writer plays with a gentle form of magic realism, and while there’s no denying some lovely moments here too, her characters speak as if on a theater stage, while the dun colored visuals lack texture or differentiation. In addition, Kaadan’s scrupulous avoidance of coming down on one side or the other in Syria’s civil war can be seen as problematic: the specificity of the conflict and the family dynamics preclude the notion that she’s aiming for universal appeal. BFI and Film 4 funding guarantee some kind of UK release, but further travel apart from festival berths will be an uphill road.
Full Review
Jay Weissberg, September 4, 2022
VERDICT: An old fashioned historical epic on steroids in which a bloodthirsty corsair makes an alliance with the King of Algiers but then determines to conquer the ruler’s headstrong wife.
CRITIC’S WEEK
her husband’s death at the hands of fearsome corsair Aruj “Barbarossa.” If that sounds like a lot to take in, it is: co directors Damien Ounouri and Adila Bendimerad embrace the old fashioned, blowsy approach to historic stories and they run with it, from massive amounts of slow mo blood splatter to arch “historicized” dialogue in which every line conveys matters of importance. Designed to resurrect a shadowy female figure from a crucial moment in Algerian history, the film’s relentless approach isn’t designed for the Euro American art house crowd, and it’s hard to imagine how much sailing it will do before docking at streaming sites. Full Review
Imagine Braveheart set in 16th century Algeria, add large dollops of Turkish historical epics and then season with a bit of Daesh training video, and you have The
LAST QUEEN
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Last Queen, a sumptuously designed costume drama about a semi legendary sovereign prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice when it means avenging
In his director’s statement on the Venice Film Festival website, Lav Diaz is candid about whom he regards as his bêtes noires du jour: “Putin, Duterte, Assad, Trump… they’ve been with us forever, the Grim Reapers of the world”. More remarkable, however, is the way the Philippine auteur has chosen to tackle their legacies head on with his latest film. Eschewing the allegories and analogies he has long deployed to make his point in most of his previous films, When the Waves Are Gone offers a highly charged commentary about the here and now.
Rather than going back in time to trace the point where things began to go wrong, as he recently did with A Tale of Filipino Violence, the seven hour family saga about the downfall of a rural clan at the onset of Ferdinand Marcos’s dictatorship in the 1970s, Diaz has set his latest film in the present day. Revolving around an ex cop whose life unravels as he confronts the consequences of
Full Review
WHEN THE WAVES ARE GONE
A pared down re interpretation of the revenge drama genre, When the Waves Are Gone is driven by the intense turns delivered by its two leads, with John Lloyd Cruz as the guilt wracked protagonist, and Ronnie Lazaro as the double faced, demented harbinger of his doom.
VENICE BIENNALE REVIEW DAILY
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OUT OF COMPETITION
VERDICT: Philippine auteur Lav Diaz offers a damning and doomed critique of the violent state of his country through the on screen physical and psychological disintegration of a policeman weighed down by the guilt of his murderous past. Clarence Tsui, September 5, 2022 the crimes he committed in uniform, When the Waves Are Gone comes complete with conversational and photographic references to the state sanctioned, extra judiciary murders which have propelled the Philippines and its now ex president Rodrigo Duterte to international notoriety.
LOVE LIFE
COMPETITION
Full Review
VERDICT: A young couple dealing with the tragic loss of a child finds their love for each other challenged in a deeply original drama from Koji Fukada (‘Harmonium’).
Like the writer director’s much admired 2016 film Harmonium, winner of the Certain Regard jury prize in Cannes, family and tragedy are the principle ingredients in this cocktail. It starts off in the most banal way possible: Taeko (Fumino Kimura) and Jiro (Kento Nagayama) are preparing a surprise birthday party for Jiro’s retired father, to the happy notes of bland piano music. While he organizes their friends and colleagues (both Jiro and Taeko are social workers), she plays board games with her joyful son Keita, who has just won an online contest rather sinisterly called “Othello”. The stage is almost set.
Deborah Young, September 5, 2022
The death of 6 year old Keita occurs in the first twenty minutes of Love Life. Barely foreshadowed, the tragedy comes out of the blue and provides the catalyst for Koji Fukada’s paradoxical drama about love, grief and the resilience of human nature. The unfolding is perhaps more surprising than emotional, yet one is left with the feeling there is a lot of wisdom tucked into this story. Without ever turning into a comedy, the carefully modulated tone of Fukada’s screenplay swings from tragedy to near farce, insisting that life is multi faceted and unpredictable and that the broken characters have no choice but to accept it for what it is. Call it a Shakespearean vision resized to fit the microcosm of a family living in a Japanese housing complex: it is a conception of the world that keeps the audience off balance until a beautiful, low key resolution in the final scene spills into the end credits.
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The stars of Martin McDonagh’s cult hit In Bruges, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, reunite for McDonagh’s latest project, The Banshees of Inisherin. Set on a desolate island off the coast of Ireland in 1923, the film tells the darkly comic and at times quite bloody story of two friends whose friendship comes undone when one of them decides he doesn’t want to talk to the other again because his friend is “dull.” Though the film is very much in Irish English instead of a more universally accessible but also pretty flavourless standard English, this could become a niche hit for Searchlight, especially since the reputation of In Bruges has grown over the years and McDonagh made the Oscar magnet Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, in the mean time. It premiered in Venice in competition.
The Banshees of Inisherin tells the story of the end of the friendship of Padraic (Farrell) and Colm (Gleeson), who both live on the
Padraic, who is a bit of a simpleton, though one with a good heart, is indeed baffled by this decision, which seems to have fallen from the sky. He can’t accept it, which leads Colm to some drastic measures to try and get his former friend to really stop talking to him. Measures that are bloody and extremely nonsensical, especially given the fact that he wants to use his newfound free time to write music. Full Review
fictional island of Inisherin. The Civil War was still raging in Ireland but on the island, life seems to continue almost as normal, with only the occasional shot heard or smoke or fire seen on the mainland. (Indeed, there’s really no reason for the film to be a period piece at all.) One day, Colm decides he’s had enough of Padraic’s “aimless chatting” and would prefer to dedicate himself to something that might actually survive him, like writing a tune for his fiddle. “Are you dying?” is his former pub buddy’s first question.
VERDICT: The latest comedy drama from Martin McDonagh, which reunites the stars of 'In Bruges,' Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, is darkly entertaining but never quite believable.
COMPETITION
Boyd van Hoeij, September 5, 2022
THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN
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IN VIAGGIO
OUT OF COMPETITION
Deborah Young, September 5, 2022
The leader of Roman Catholicism might at first glance seem off topic for Gianfranco Rosi, the Italian documentary filmmaker best known for his subtle and deep reaching examinations of the effects of migration in Fire at Sea and how the Middle East conflicts affect ordinary people in Notturno. The originality of Rosi’s eccentric Sacro GRA, which won the Golden Lion in Venice in 2013, and the poignancy of Fire at Sea (Golden Bear in Berlin 2016) are not the up front qualities of In Viaggio, his new documentary on the philosophy and travels of Pope Francis. Yet looking a little deeper, it is linked to the earlier films by multiple threads. The film’s simple structure in which one papal trip flows into another… Full Review
VERDICT: Italy’s premier documaker Gianfranco Rosi turns his attention to Pope Francis and his non stop foreign travels, stressing the ecumenical core of his messaging as he comments on the world’s horrors.
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Director of THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN
VERDICT: Writer director Carolina Cavalli paints a charming picture of a charmless heroine in this confidently quirky debut feature.
AMANDA
Martin McDonagh Director/Screenwriter/Producer
Martin McDonagh (birthname: Martin Faranan McDonagh) is first and foremost a writer of dramas observing with caustic humor and detail characters often living on the criminal edge. While his initial fame was as a highly successful and lauded playwright on the London stage (his plays usually set in violent conditions in western Ireland, the birthplace of his parents), McDonagh has made an emphatic shift to cinema as a triple threat director writer producer, including his Oscar winning comedy drama, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
ORRIZONTI EXTRA
A spoilt young Italian woman goes on an emotional journey, but forgets to pack a map, in writer director Carolina Cavalli’s refreshingly unsentimental coming of age comedy Amanda. The only Italian film scheduled to premiere at both Venice and Toronto festivals this year, this quirky cool debut feature is unashamedly slight and episodic, but just about charming and funny enough to get away with it, much like its self absorbed heroine. Indeed, credit is due to Cavalli for making her unsympathetic main character and her inconsequential life so compelling. There are echoes of Greta Gerwig’s gauche, narcissistic screen queens here, but also of vintage Wes Anderson, particularly in the film’s bittersweet comic tone and formally strong, heavily stylised visual aesthetic. Amanda opens in Italian theatres next month, with French sales outfit Charades handing deals in other territories.
Stephen Dalton, September 5, 2022
Played with an authentic aura of sulky, pampered princess by coltish young Julia Roberts a like Benedetta Porcaroli, the titular heroine of Amanda is a 24 year old disaffected rich kid from a dysfunctional Italian dynasty, their money seemingly derived from a pharmacy store empire. Amanda lives an idle but dissatisfied life, friendless and aimless, defiantly anti social but quietly desperate for affection and validation. She pretends to have a job, but never really works, filling her shapeless days by drifting between half empty cinemas and techno rave parties, floating in the family pool, or picking fights over the dinner table Full Review
After(2017).the
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success of his early pair of trilogies for the stage including The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996) and The Lonesome West (1997), as well as The Cripple of Inishmaan (1996) Martin McDonagh began his first steps into cinema with a short film, Six Shooter (2004), with Brendan Gleeson, which won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short. Soon after this success, McDonagh made his feature debut, the black crime comedy, In Bruges (2008), with Gleeson and Colin Farrell as a pair of Irish hitmen in Belgium. It earned the opening night slot at the Sundance Film Festival and scored McDonagh’s second Oscar nod, for a Best Screenplay nomination. Full Bio
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THE LORD OF THE ANTS
Deborah Young, September 6, 2022
Viewed today, this lightly fictionalized true story feels like a piece of latter day Victoriana, a sad rerun of Oscar Wilde’s trial for homosexuality in 1895, yet bearing uncomfortable echoes of present day attitudes. As Amelio has stated, ”even if, apparently, no one gets scandalized over anything nowadays, in reality nothing much has changed… prejudices remain.” The straightforward screenplay, which he co authored with Edoardo Petti and Federico Fava, brings its points home sharply and without embellishment.
VERDICT: Director Gianni Amelio recreates a dismaying but true story from 1960’s Italy, when a brilliant writer who does little to hide his love for young men is persecuted and put on trial by a laughably outmoded justice system.
COMPETITION
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with unhesitating command and self assurance, Braibanti emerges as a profile in courage and dignity who will recall, for many, the better known life of another cutting edge intellectual of the period, Pier Paolo Pasolini.
The story opens one evening at the end of an outdoor picnic at the Festa dell’Unità, the popular summer get togethers sponsored by the daily paper of the Italian Communist Party. Full Review
Played by actor Luigi Lo Cascio
After Hammamet, his biographical portrait of Italian politician Bettino Craxi during his last days of self imposed exile in Tunisia, Gianni Amelio unearths another forgotten corner of his country’s history which is far more fascinating and universal in import. In place of a controversial national politician, The Lord of the Ants (Il signore delle formiche) turns a spotlight on the ground breaking poet and playwright Aldo Braibanti, a protagonist perhaps too full of himself to be called likable, but whose unflappable courage in the face of unjust persecution is both admirable and inspiring.
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Apparently it was Swinton’s idea to play both roles, despite hardly needing to prove her versatility.
Full Review
COMPETITION
Joanna Hogg fans will be more forgiving than most while watching The Eternal Daughter, the kind of self analytical autobiographical film in which the director’s avatar comes off as a very annoying figure indeed. Even more explicitly than in The Souvenir Part II (yet considerably less involving), Hogg’s latest exploration of mother daughter relationships is unabashedly meant to mirror her own, with an emotionally fragile upper class filmmaker protagonist, played by Tilda Swinton, trying to write a movie about her emotionally insulated mother, played by Tilda Swinton: the stiff upper lip generation versus its opposite. Set over a few sunless days in a lugubrious country house hotel swathed in mist, The Eternal Daughter is designed as a ghost story, but Hogg uses all the trappings in such a well worn manner that the atmosphere feels dull rather than spooky, and the ending contains no surprise. While impressive that most of the dialogue pitch perfect, fully of its class is improvised, and Swinton’s performance can be assigned to acting students, the conceit of using the actress for both roles creates a vacuum that’s rarely filled. Martin Scorsese’s presence as executive producer plus Hogg’s art house rep will translate into limited distribution.
VERDICT: Joanna Hogg’s latest exploration of mother daughter relations sees Tilda Swinton playing both roles in an etiolated ghost story whose artificiality kills its characters despite Swinton’s admirable performances.
Jay Weissberg, September 6, 2022
THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER
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Mussolini bows to the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, 1939
On October 28, 1922, Benito Mussolini’s Black Shirts entered the city of Rome and were granted power by the King of Italy to avoid bloodshed. With the 100th anniversary of the event coming up and, according to some, a reboot based on the current political climate in Italy the Venice Film Festival found a way to remember a much contested moment in Italian history with two films made 60 years apart.
A TALE OF TWO MARCHES
Cousins explained his reasons for approaching the subject, “I grew up in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, our own ‘years of lead’, marked by political and sectarian divisions. A low intensity war, is what it was known as The Troubles and it was also a time when the British government was operating underground, with extreme right paramilitary groups, to repress the civil rights movement. The dangers of the right, therefore, have always been a part of my life.” As one would expect, his analysis is rooted in a film, A noi (literally, “To Us”), a purported documentary on the march that came out mere days after the actual event and has effectively shaped how we think of the coup visually, even though a lot of it was staged. As Cousins mentions, research indicates the real march was re enacted a few days later because it was raining the day it occurred. (Continued on page 4)
Kicking things off, as the out of competition opener of Giornate degli Autori, was Mark Cousins’ The March on Rome, a documentary that uses Mussolini’s coup to discuss the relationship between right wing politics and cinema, specifically in the context of propaganda cinema. Gaia Furrer, artistic director of the Giornate sidebar, shared this with The Film Verdict: “It’s an important film because it lets us see the manipulative power of images up close, and because it took a non Italian director to make us revisit our history, and not repress it. I’m pleased we were able to host it before it embarks on an American tour and is released in theaters.”
VERDICT: A young woman's first love turns out to be a bad dream in the final film of South Korean master Kim Ki duk, a visually striking if (for Kim) restrained relationship film that was posthumously completed by Estonian producer and director Artur Veeber.
(Continued…)
Max Borg
Deborah Young, September 6, 2022
A TALE OF TWO MARCHES
A young man and woman meet on the street and begin an obsessive love affair from which they try to exclude the entire world in Call of God (Kone taevast), a troubling if intense tale that hovers between dream and reality. It was written and filmed by Kim Ki duk before his death from COVID 19 complications at the end of 2020. At the time he was living in Latvia, far from his legal troubles in his native land, and the actors, the setting and the Russian they speak offer curious variations on the director’s familiar South Korean subjects. But above all, of course, one feels the hand of Kim’s Estonian collaborator Artur Veeber, who completed the film along with other colleagues based on the director’s notes. What the fate of this Estonian Kyrgyz Latvian coprod will be is a question mark, given the circumstances under which it was made.
OUT OF COMPETITION FICTION
CALL OF GOD
Full Review
“Closing the festival weekend, in the Venice Classics sidebar, is the restored print of Dino Risi’s March on Rome, originally released in 1962 and focusing on two former soldiers (they are played by Vittorio Gassman and Ugo Tognazzi, the latter of whom would have turned 100 this year) who join the Fascist party out of convenience but are too lazy to make any actual effort. Says festival director Alberto Barbera: “We were finally able to convince [rights holder] Aurelio De Laurentiis to restore the film, which had fallen into obscurity over the years.” As for the coincidence of the two Marches playing at the festival, Furrer adds: “We were thrilled when we found out it was happening. Risi’s film is a masterpiece to rediscover, and the involuntary and dangerous comedic aspects of Fascism in that movie prefigure the grotesque side of the coup that Cousins analyzes in his documentary.”
The last years of Kim Ki duk’s life unfolded under the black shadow of accusations by actresses of physical assault, sexual harassment and rape charges, TV exposés and a series of court trials in South Korea.
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Deborah Young, September 6, 2022
Her long blond hair extensions streaming from under a cowboy hat, Vera Gemma is a riveting, larger than life subject in Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel’s Vera. Having grown up in the shadow of her famous father Giuliano Gemma, she has reached an aimless, lonely adulthood drifting through casting calls (she’s never chosen) and branded parties, until one day an accident brings her into the life of a family of slum dwellers on the outskirts of Rome. As the filmmakers build a portrait of Vera’s empathy and generosity, they gradually introduce fictional elements that become indistinguishable from documentary reality, giving the film structure and narrative flash. It was a standout in the Venice Horizons section and should easily ride out of the festival world into specialized
Wevenues.meet
VERDICT: Award winning documentary team Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel plunge deep into the heart of the adult daughter of spaghetti western star Giuliano Gemma in a wonderfully touching film portrait that tips its Stetson at the illusory side of documentaries.
VERA
Vera at her most glamorous and superficial, an eccentrically dressed figure in sexy designer wear and her omnipresent cowboy hat, which appears in various colors to match her outfits, and whose Oedipal connection to Daddy is implicit and a little dismaying. As she poses for photographers at an event on Via Veneto with two fingers framing her eye in a V sign, we pigeonhole her as a narcissist fashionista of dubious taste. But when a young taxi driver takes her home and drops her in front of a fancy entrance, her loneliness is so evident, it’s painful to watch. Full Review
ORIZZONTI
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beauty and terror this implies. That’s a large part of Alice Diop’s extraordinary first fiction feature, though it also feels limiting to reduce such a complex, 360 degree film into one broad concept. Saint Omer takes a simple court procedural format a Senegalese woman in France is on trial for drowning her infant and ever so slowly builds it into
an overwhelming rumination on motherhood and racial expectations, not via the usual showy courtroom drama, which is all talk, but through silences and gazes as well as words.
COMPETITION
Diop’s documentary We challenged audiences to recognize the way people of color are unconsciously perceived in France (and by extension, Europe and the U.S.), where the urge to qualify descriptions, such as “articulate black woman” or “well dressed black man” reveal a smothering blanket of racism that impacts daily lives. Saint Omer, based on the real trial of Fabienne Kabou, brilliantly channels this constant undercurrent throughout the clean, rigidly structured script, using the original case to interrogate perception, truth and the complex binds of motherhood. There’s simply no chance this film will come away empty handed at Venice, notwithstanding the notorious unreadability of festival juries.
Full Review
Jay Weissberg, September 7, 2022
Issues surrounding motherhood are so charged that it’s exceedingly rare to find a treatment that delves into the darker currents nonjudgmentally:sothe fears of expectant mothers, informed by memories of their own imperfect maters, the notion that you’re forever linked at the cellular level to another being, with all the
VERDICT: Alice Diop’s superb fiction debut is a marvel of control and depth, using the trial of a Senegalese woman guilty of killing her infant to honestly explore the complexities of motherhood while foregrounding it all within France’s racist currents.
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SAINT OMER
Peter (Jackman) is a big shot New York lawyer who’s about to be asked to be on the team of a senator considering a bigger political career. It’s something he always hoped would happen and the moment finally seems to have arrived. But then, his ex wife Kate (Dern) knocks on the door of the apartment he shares with new girlfriend Beth (Vanessa Kirby) and their newborn son, Theo. Kate is distraught and worried about their teenage boy, Nicholas (Australian actor Zen McGrath), who hasn’t been to school for a month, though she has only now found out. Full Review
After his well received debut The Father, which netted Anthony Hopkins an unexpected second Best Actor Oscar, French playwright turned film director Florian Zeller returns with The Son, another adaptation of one of his own plays. Hopkins stars in a supporting role as the father of Peter, the protagonist played by Hugh Jackman. The play and now the film are about Peter’s struggle to figure out how to be a father to his two children, a newborn with his new girlfriend as well as his 17 year old son with his ex wife (played by Laura Dern in perfect ex wife mode). It’s especially Nicholas, the teenager, who gives him pause, as he seems to have still not processed his parents’ divorce and it has taken a mental toll on him that’s perhaps greater than his parents realise. Made with much of the same team as Zeller’s previous feature, this second work looks and feels
Boyd van Hoeij, September 7, 2022
THE SON
VERDICT: French playwright turned film director Florian Zeller ('The Father'), again adapts his own play, here starring Hugh Jackman, and the result is a solid drama that unravels in the home stretch.
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COMPETITION
indeed like part of a future trilogy (the third play, The Mother, was actually the first of the three produced but it has yet to be filmed). Yet The Son doesn’t have the neat visual metaphor of The Father, turning this into a well executed but also largely familiar feeling family drama.
WORLD WAR III
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VERDICT: A manual day laborer is selected to play Hitler in a film, but this stroke of “luck” leads to terrible tragedies on the film set in Houman Seyedi’s expertly crafted, realistic/metaphoric tale about authoritarian society.
Prolific filmmaker and actor Houman Seyedi has been at the cutting edge of new Iranian cinema for the last ten years with ground breakers like 13, a tale of teenage rebels, and Sheeple, a grungy actioner about a hoodlum with delusions of grandeur. In World War III (Jang e Jahari Sevom) his career takes another turn in a searing portrait of poverty in today’s Iran, evolving into a full fledged metaphor for an unnamed, murderous dictatorship by the end. And since the current state censorship policies have become more stringent than ever, now requiring detailed screenplay approval before a shooting permit is issued, there is indeed a lot of metaphor involved. One has to admire the skill of Seyedi and co scripters Arian Vazir Daftari and Azad Jafarian in creating an edge of seat drama that also packs a big social message, though inevitably some of it gets lost for Western audiences.
ORIZZONTI
Shakib (Mohsen Tanabandeh) is a poor man who has lost his family, home and roots — in fact, his emotional center in an earthquake. Full Review
Deborah Young, September 7, 2022
Hugh Jackman
DIRECTOR AND STAR OF THE SON
ANHELL69
VERDICT: Debuting director Theo Montoya offers up an ambitious slice of atmospheric and resonant queer punk.
Florian Zeller is one of Europe’s most acclaimed contemporary playwrights who has made a striking transition to filmmaking. Zeller’s move is especially interesting since he has adapted and filmed his own plays, starting with The Father (2020), and continuing with The Son (2022). Even more notably, Zeller won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Father (nominated for six Oscars), which is actually his fourth produced screenplay, the second case of him adapting one of his plays for the big screen, the third filmed version of his play Full Bio
Actor/Singer/Producer
Florian Zeller Director/Screenwriter/Playwright/Novelist/ Producer
Hugh Jackman (birthname: Hugh Michael Jackman) holds the rare distinction of being a world class musical performer, Marvel Cinematic Universe mega star as Wolverine, and a fine dramatic and comedy actor. His combination of performing diversity and screen and stage stardom is rare in his generation, and points to his durability. Before he broke through as Wolverine in X Men (2000), directed by Bryan Singer, Jackman had made a huge impact on the musical stage in Australia and the U.K., particularly as star of Trevor Nunn’s acclaimed revival of Oklahoma! (1998), Full Bio
Medellín’s queer underground gets its time in the spotlight in Anhell69, a pulsating blast of queer punk populated by ghosts in more ways than one. Both a film as well as a meta film, this creation from multi hyphenate Theo Montoya, who directed, wrote, shot and co edited the work, takes as a starting point an abandoned project to make a B movie about ghosts in the past, casting his queer friends in the main roles. But youngsters in Medellín rarely last, as the film so poignantly illustrates, as a drugs pandemic and gang violence continue to take a lot of especially young lives, turning the people set to play fictional ghosts into actual ghosts that haunt both Montoya and the viewers. Clocking in at a compact 74 minutes, this should be a welcome title at queer film showcases and festivals looking for South American and more experimental work aimed at youngsters.
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Boyd van Hoeij, September 7, 2022
VENICE BIENNALE REVIEW DAILY 8 SEPTEMBER 2022 Page 4
Megastars Kelly Clarkson and Dolly Parton remake the iconic song for release of the new documentary Still Working 9 to 5, which reunites Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton and Dabney Coleman over 42 years later in the continued fight for working women’s rights
Sundance Institute CEO Joana Vicente announced today that Eugene Hernandez will join the nonprofit Institute as the next Director of the Sundance Film Festival and head of public programming. Hernandez, a leader in the film and media industry for more than 25 years, has spent much of his career leading and advising nonprofit arts organizations. He joins the Sundance Institute, which has helped artists thrive for the last 41 years, as the Festival nears its fifth decade. Since its founding, the Festival has been the premier platform for independent storytellers and audiences. It's the home for new voices and perspectives, introducing global audiences to the most groundbreaking and culturally defining films.
The song will release Sept. 9 Still Working 9 5 reviewed earlier this year at Hot Docs and is slated for Nashville and Mill Valley Fest and will have a limited release in NY C& LA Sept. 16 22
Walking out from the tremendous success of their Greek production Smyrna, Tanweer is venturing into co producing feature films in the Arab world with the rising production division of Arabia Pictures Group.
HERNANDEZ UPPED TO DIRECTOR OF SUNDANCE
GREEK ARAB PACT
The three picture pact between Arabia Pictures Group and Tanweer is joined by local based Egyptian production company Vibrations Studios
will join Sundance Institute's core leadership team this November, report to CEO Joana Vicente, and be based between the Institute's New York and Los Angeles offices while also working in the Park City office.
The upcoming 2023 Festival is being led by Vicente, working closely with Director of Programming Kim Yutani, along with the Institute's leadership team. Hernandez's first Festival leading as Director will be in 2024 for Sundance's 40th.
STILL WORKING 9-5
Ronyupon Mitri, Managing Director of Arabia Pictures Distribution said: “We are trying to cater to our audiences in delivering entertaining quality films. APG will theatrically release the films in KSA and the Gulf Territories. While our partner Tanweer will release the films across Europe, Asia and North America simultaneously with MENA.”
will be responsible for guiding and overseeing the Festival's overall vision and strategy while collaborating with Yutani and the programming team, as well as the leadership team, to further the aspiring artistic vision of the Sundance Film Festival. He will lead the planning and execution of the Festival, working with senior leaders across the organization on the in person and online elements of the marquee event. He will shape the Institute's public programming globally and locally, both physically and digitally, championing the social and cultural role and rights of artists and developing programs to foster dialogue and community with Sundance supported work at the Hernandecenter.z
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Hernandez will lead the Institute's year round public programming while amplifying the importance of independent film and media. He
Saudi Arabia’s rapidly expanding Arabia Pictures Group is proudly teaming up with Greece’s based Tanweer, and setting up the stage for a strategic partnership, for the years to come, on several projects in different media. The first venture will be to develop and produce a slate of three features to be shot in the region directed by emerging talent.
The first title that just wrapped production is “#Gawwezni”, a romantic comedy about a young man, Fares, who madly falls in love with Lily until a spell is casted
Deborah Young, September 8, 2022
9 September 2022
The shrill tone of many scenes is fully justified by the narrative (loss of a child/loss of eyesight/loss of freedom/loss of mind), but they were jarring even to some festival goers at Venice, where the film had its world premiere in competition. The Match Factory release will depend on the support of festival juries to bring this exceptional work and its faithful portrait of Iran to the larger public.
BEYOND THE WALL
monolithic prison, has the punch of poetry and truth.
COMPETITION
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For many years now, the real news about Iranian society has not been seeping out of the censored news media but arriving from films like Beyond the Wall (the original title translates as Night, Interior, Wall), a powerful drama that really tears the veil off police brutality in a ruthless state clinging to power through violence and intimidation. It also
describes one of the now daily protest demonstrations staged by a starving, desperate population. How writer director Vahid Jalilvand circumvented the ever more restrictive filmmaking policies is anyone’s guess, but the final CGI shot, in which the camera pulls back from a hand clutching the iron bars on a window to reveal an enormous,
In fact, what distinguishes Beyond the Wall from many other Iranian films from the last few years is its refusal to cloak its message in metaphor, instead telling the story of Ali and Leyla directly. Dragging the viewer into a dark, closed world whose every exit is heavily guarded, actor Navid Mohammadzadeh (I’m Not Angry, Just 6.5, Leila’s Brothers) delivers another highly original performance as a young Kurdish man who is going blind as the result of an accident. Full Review
VERDICT: A shattering drama that courageously portrays Iran as a violent Big Brother police state, Vahid Jalilvand’s third film is a shrill, breath taking mind trip driven by between two exceptional actors, Navid Mohammadzadeh and Diana Habibi.
VERDICT: Pre release hype will be the biggest friend to this mess of a pseudo biopic that reduces Marilyn Monroe to a disturbed child woman with Daddy issues, never offering a glimpse of the screen magic notwithstanding Ana de Armas’ impressive recreation.
What’s especially frustrating is that Dominik’s terrific The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford sought to demythologize one of the American West’s most famed figures, and yet with Blonde he does the opposite, treating his subject from one angle only: unstable victim. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised, given this is the go to mode for all picked over bios of troubled female celebrities who died young it’s always Marilyn and Diana of Wales, never James Dean or River Phoenix. Full Review
At the top of the copyright page of Joyce Carol Oates’ novel Blonde is the following statement: “Blonde should be read solely as a work of fiction, not as a biography of Marilyn Monroe.” It’s hard to believe Oates actually believed anyone would pay attention to that line. Certainly Andrew Dominik’s adaptation doesn’t, judging by his maddeningly reductive yet equally overblown movie that very much wants us to believe this is Marilyn. What’s so infuriating about his Blonde is that he seems to actually think he’s offering unvarnished insight into Norma Jeane’s soul when instead he’s simply changed the icon into a different kind of icon, just as standardized and one dimensional as a much replicated Byzantine painting. This is the Marilyn whose Daddy issues are so all consuming there’s really nothing else driving her: she is
BLONDE
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COMPETITION
Jay Wesisberg, September 8, 2022
her neuroses, and we as an audience get to gaze at her fragility as well as her semi naked body, rather too often. Ana de Armas’ much discussed casting turns out to be the film’s only success story and hers is a career making performance, but the vehicle is unworthy.
GOLIATH
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Clarence Tsui, September 8, 2022
Revolving around a limping widower’s slow burning attempt to unleash vengeance on murderous mobsters who have decimated his family, Goliath relocates the spaghetti western to Central Asia with masterful technique and invention. It’s bound to shoot its way through the festival circuit after its bow in the Horizons sidebar.
Yerzhanov’s first film of the year, the Rotterdam premiered Assault, is set in deep winter and centres on the comical attempts of a bunch of useless schoolteachers to fight masked gunmen who have taken their pupils hostage. In Goliath, the filmmaker has replaced snow with sand and gags with gunfire, but the theme remains the same: ultimate evil lies not with those who terrorise, but with ordinary people the masses drenched in moral corruption and cowardice who allow the terror to persist.
Goliath is a good fit for its Venice premiere in more ways than one. Inspired by Niccolò Macchiavelli’s ideas about power dynamics in human society and Sergio Leone’s eye for windswept lawlessness in all its gory glory, Kazakh cineaste Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s second film of 2022 is at once a cutting political allegory, a taut revenge tale and a visual extravaganza.
HORIZONS EXTRA
On paper, Yerzhanov’s premise seems to be indeed a battle between Goliath and David on the Kazakh steppes. Full Review
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SNOW IN SEPTEMBER
Ofate.nce their new bouncing brother has been brought into the world, sisters Zoe (Irene Casagrande), Iris (Anastasia Almo), and Clio (Sofia Almo) can do nothing but await their parents’ impossible choice. The film is split into two discrete scenes one in which the girls make the most of the time they have left Full Review
Purev Ochir’s film is all about thresholds. The first ones are architectural. In the crumbling Soviet tower block where Davka (Munkhbaatar) lives with his mother (Odgerel Bat Orshikh), he one day finds himself opening the apartment door to a stranger (Enkhgerel Baasanjav) who subsequently inveigles her way inside. Full Review
VERDICT: A family is forced to make an unthinkable sacrifice in this stomach churning dystopian tragedy about the chilling effects of social control.
TRIA
Ben Nicholson, September 8, 2022 Giulia Grandinetti’s gripping short drama, Tria, is set in an alternative near present in which the oligarchs of an authoritarian Rome have instituted limits on procreation. In this world, couples or at least certain couples are only allowed to have three children; if they fall pregnant again, they must carry the new baby to term and then choose a child to have killed, prioritising the lives of males. It’s a deliciously terrifying scenario to provide the backdrop of a contained and charged short film. Grandinetti drops the audience into this nightmarish setting in media res en route to a hospital where a fourth child will be born, and three adolescent daughters are confronted by an ominous
Ben Nicholson, September 8, 2022 The growing pains of adolescence are hardly novel subject matter for the cinema, but in her short drama Snow in September, Lkhagvadulam Purev Ochir offers a slightly unusual spin on a familiar trope. Telling the story of a teenager living in Ulaanbaatar who is, quite unwittingly, encroached upon by the adult world, the filmmaker mines something unique in its treatment of young love, physical intimacy, personal boundaries, and the pitfalls of masculinity. Featuring an impressively subtle performance from Sukhbat Munkhbaatar in the lead role, the film premiered in the Orizzonti section at the Venice Film Festival before going on to screen in Toronto later in the month.
SHORTS
VERDICT: A teenage boy’s worldview is unsettled by a confusing encounter with an older woman in this riveting Mongolian coming of age drama.
In terms of the works presented this year, there was an enormous wealth of titles available. Just the competitive section alone counted over 15 hours of XR content divided over a total of 30 works. While this suggests a half hour average running time, in reality a lot of works were either short (under 20 minutes) or long (40 minutes or longer). Full Review
This year, the section formerly known as Venice VR Expanded was renamed Venice Immersive, to further underline the slow shift that has been happening from pure VR to XR (Expanded Reality), with 360° videos, installations and live and hybrid performances that are combined with virtual worlds experienced through headsets or other technical means.The works are presented not only in a separate section but also on a separate island, the Isola del Lazzaretto Vecchio, not far from the Lido, where the Biennale del cinema is headquartered. This means that even going to the building that houses all the XR experiences has a little pre show (or “on boarding” as it is often referred to in the world of XR) in the form of a very short boat trip from the Lido to Lazzaretto Vecchio that you literally need to board.
VENICE IMMERSIVE
Boyd van Hoeij, September 8, 2022
XR AND VR REVIEWS
The Venice Film Festival was the first major film festival to dedicate a special section to Virtual Reality (VR) that wasn’t an ad hoc event. The entire VR community of producers, artists, buyers, sellers and exhibition people now congregate in Venice each year to present or experience the latest works in VR and to network and build relationships.
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VERDICT: Reviews from the XR experiences on offer on the Venice Immersive island.
here unfolds like a kind of road movie that’s only partially
A mother and son trying to get by in the jungle that are the margins of contemporary Morocco in the drama The Damned Don’t Cry (Les Damnés ne pleurent pas). This is the second feature from writer director Fyzal Boulifa, whose Britain set contemporary kitchen sink drama Lynn + Lucy impressed festival audiences in 2019. His sophomore outing isn’t quite the same home run, feeling baggy and somewhat opaque in places, and with performances that can feel a little tentative. That said, it should nonetheless travel the festival circuit quite widely, based on Boulifa’s reputation and a general lack of solid features from the TheMaghreb.drama
another, always escaping some kind of small scale disaster in the nick of time.
Full Review
Andrew Dominik is an exceptionally talented director writer producer whose films deliberately re invent genres while celebrating them, and exhibit a pronounced aesthetic sophistication. Right out of the gate, with his Australian feature debut, the crime drama Chopper (2000), starring Eric Bana, Dominik delivered a stylish cult hit that attracted Hollywood’s immediate attention. Seven years would pass (after abandoning an adaptation of Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me) until Dominik’s sophomore project, the gorgeous and elegant Western, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), starring Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Shepard, and Mary Louise Parker. Premiering at the Venice film festival, the movie was a commercial failure and a critical triumph, leading to two Oscar nominations. Dominik reunited with Pitt for his third film, a fine adaptation of George V. Higgins’ crime fiction novel titled Cogan’s Trade, Killing Them Softly (2012), competing at the Cannes film festival and handled by the Weinstein Company. Full Bio
Andrew Dominik Director/Writer/Producer
VERDICT: Fyzal Boulifa's sophomore feature after festival hit 'Lynn + Lucy' is too narrow in scope and yet not precise enough. Boyd van Hoeij, September 8, 2022
GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI
Powered by: Director of BLONDE
THE DAMNED DON’T CRY
a geographical one, as the matronly Fatima Zahra (Aicha Tebbae) and her teenage son, Selim (Abdellah El Hajjouji), wander from one place to
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10 September 2022 day 11
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Deborah Young, September 9, 2022
After making films for years while on conditional release from prison, some of them shot in his own or someone else’s apartment (This Is Not a Film 2011, Closed Curtain 2013), in a moving vehicle (Taxi 2015) and in a remote Iranian village (3 Faces in 2018), director Jafar Panahi returns to village life in a context of heightened drama in No Bears (Khers Nist). Even more directly than in his previous films, he portrays himself as he is a filmmaker hamstrung in his movements by the Iranian authorities, whose heroic determination not to bow his head and stop shooting is on a par with film characters battling a life changing handicap or illness. This level of self autobiographyreferentialleaveslittle room for the viewer to separate Panahi the man from the character he is playing, so effectively are the lines between reality and fiction blurred.
VERDICT: The world premiere of Jafar Panahi’s simple but militantly engrossing ‘No Bears’, which comes to grips with the thin line between art and reality, took place in Venice competition while the director remained in prison in Tehran after his second arrest on July 11.
COMPETITION
Adding to the illusion is the very real fact that Panahi is now back in Evin prison, the regime’s leading “hotel” for political prisoners who dare to speak out and question its decrees. He was arrested on July 11 after demanding news from a
Tehran court about the fate of two other Iranian directors, Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Aleahmad, arrested for protesting the deadly collapse of a building in Abadan.
NO BEARS
Full Review
Thompson’s blossoming star profile and Buscemi’s highly respected track record should attract curious audiences and sales interest following its Lido launch as closing film in the Venice Days sidebar.
THE LISTENER
single actor, single location chamber piece that unfolds over a single night, Steve Buscemi’s The Listener is an alluring package on paper, even if it ultimately proves more interesting for its formal austerity than for its low voltage drama. With ever watchable screen queen Tessa Thompson as star, and actor director Buscemi back behind the camera for the first time in 15 years, this Venice and Toronto world premiere is guaranteed plenty of buzz anyway.
Stephen Dalton, September 9, 2022
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The Listener was written by Alessandro Camon, a seasoned producer with just a handful of screenplay credits to date, most notably Oren Moverman’s The Messenger (2009). The episodic story may lack the mounting tension and emotional gut punch that characterised other one person dramas in a similar vein, such as Locke (2013) or The Guilty (2018), but it works as a modestly engaging stylistic experiment and a heartfelt light touch commentary on the post traumatic aftershocks of the Covid pandemic.
VERDICT: Steve Buscemi directs Tessa Thompson in this well meaning but slender single person drama about hurting and healing in a post Covid world.
Thompson plays Beth, a crisis helpline volunteer just beginning her regular night shift of trying to sooth the troubled souls of strangers down the line from her modest LA apartment. Full Review
GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI
VERDICT: The sixth feature from French actor director Roschdy Zem, co written by co star Maïwenn, feels like it's on autopilot most of the time. Boyd van Hoeij, September 9, 2022
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in the 2011 Oscar derby, and the Omar Sy vehicle Chocolat. This is the director’s first collaboration on a screenplay with Maïwenn, another actor director who, like Zem, also co stars. Her influence is all over this shouty and chaotic yet quite authentically lived in story of an extended family with many grievances. But as a director Zem doesn’t quite have the same verve and the film’s modest canvas doesn’t quite have the same impact as Maïwenn’s more sprawlingly untidy narratives, such as Polisse and DNA. It might turn out to be the kind of modest endeavour that is more hurt than helped by having premiered in the main competition in Venice.
OUR TIES
Two brothers are confronted with harsh truth about themselves and each other in Our Ties (Les Miens), a French drama directed by actor director Roschdy Zem, for whom this is his sixth time in the director’s chair after such films as Bad Faith with Cécile de France, Omar Killed Me, which represented Morocco
The white haired Moussa (Sami Bouajila) comes from a family with several siblings, including Samia (Meriem Serbah), who always puts the other members of her family first, Salah (Rachid Bouchareb), who has been out of a job for a while, and the long suffering Adil (Abel Jafri). But the pride of the family is their brother Ryad (Zem), who is the presenter of a late night sports program on TV. Full Review
COMPETITION
MY GIRLFRIEND
Tom CJ Brown’s atmospheric animation Christopher at Sea begins in Southampton when the eponymous traveller embarks on a personal voyage. Seeking something unfathomable from a proper oceanic odyssey, he takes a berth on a cargo ship heading across the Atlantic. What follows takes as its inspiration Franz Schubert’s 1823 song cycle Die schone Mullerin which itself was based on a series of poems by Wilhelm Müller. They tell of a young wanderer who fell in love with a miller’s daughter but who was displaced from her affections by another man before drowning himself in a brook. Brown’s film presents a shifting adaptation of this tale, dominated by the hulking form of the vessel
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Aboard the ship, Christopher’s life feels marginal. He proffers information that he has left a sweetheart at home and he also receives an email from her while at sea but he very much embodies the drifter, passed down from Muller via Schubert.
Full Review
VERDICT: A harmless ruse to enable some teenage fumbling upsets the equilibrium of a relationship in Kawthar Younis’ pointed chamber piece Ben Nicholson, September 9, 2022 Set in a cramped apartment in Giza, Kawthar Younis’ My Girl Friend is built around an instance of contrivance and duplicity. Desperate to share, but forbidden from doing so by social convention, young couple Ali (Marc Haggar) and Sarah (Elham Safieddine) formulate a ruse. Arriving at Sarah’s house disguised as a girl a fictional friend named Alia Ali manages to bluff his way past Sarah’s parents and into her bedroom for a supposed study sleep over. However, the pressures of keeping up the pretence over the course of the evening, and the resulting shift in dynamics, creates a new tension in their relationship. This is primarily caused by Ali’s insecurities, and the different apparently perspectiveundesirablehegainsby pretending to be female. When he arrives at Sarah’s, and they awkwardly bundle him past her parents, the deception feels exciting. Younis and the cinematographer Seifeldin Khaled capture the two teenagers’ intimacy once behind the closed Full Review
SHORTS
VERDICT: Inspired by Schubert’s song cycle Die schone Mullerin, Christopher at Sea is a dizzying animated odyssey into solitude and obsessive, unrequited desire.
CHRISTOPHER AT SEA
Ben Nicholson, September 9, 2022
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Boyd van Hoeij, September 9, 2022
COMPETITION
Saint Francis of Assisi, who lived at the start of the 13th century in central Italy, gave his name to not only the current pope but also the Franciscan Order. What fewer people might be aware of is that he also co founded what is now called the Order of Saint Clare, together with one of his young followers, the unsurprisingly named Clare (née Chiara). In the simply titled drama Clare (Chiara), Italian writer director Susanna Nicchiarelli (Nico 1988, about an icon from another era) tries to sketch the events in Clare’s life that would lead to the foundation of this first female religious order that had its Rules written by a woman. However, what on paper sounds like a fascinating idea for a film doesn’t ever really work on screen. Nicchiarelli’s Clare is a woman who seems to have no personality, so it hard to believe she would inspire others to follow her. But to make matters worse, she also doesn’t seem to have any clear convictions about what should constitute a religious order or a religious leader, or whether a… Full Review
CLARE
VERDICT: Susanna Nicchiarelli's biopic of Saint Clare seems less interested in religion than a lesbian nun spectacle like Paul Verhoeven's 'Benedetta.'
Verdict: On Board for Oldenburg Discoveries
The Oldenburg Festival has managed to preserve its intimate atmosphere and founding purpose over the years: to celebrate and support the diverse voices and visions of independent filmmakers, to honor the creativity of the artists upon which the festival depends, and to create a unique experience and inspiring meeting place for filmmakers, audiences, and media professionals. Apart from a strong focus on the discovery of new artists, The Oldenburg Festival honors acclaimed filmmakers and actors with a Retrospective and a Tribute every year to recognize their work.
https://www.filmfest oldenburg.de/
The Oldenburg International Film Festival known for its creativity, independence, vibrant selections of films is thrilled to announce collaboration with the Film Verdict, whose Critics will be on the ground for the fests 29th edition, publishing the digital Oldenburg Review Daily.
The Film Verdict will publish the Oldenburg Review Daily each day of the festival, beginning on September 14 reaching over 27,000+ verified industry professionals. The Film Verdict Daily has quickly become the leading source of quality international reviews at quality film festivals around the world.
Festival Director Torsten Neumann, “The independent film community waited a long time to have a platform like The Film Verdict to review films from such a professional and quality point of view. Oldenburg is very happy to have TFV attend the festival and review our selection of films and publish the Oldenburg Review Daily.”
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Oldenburg Film Festival director Torsten Neumann
"…Many are compelled to compare Oldenburg to other festivals, especially North American festival for its edginess, atmosphere and independent film selections, but instead, TFV think s it’s completely unique and that’s what makes it perfect for The Film Verdict critics to attend and publish the Oldenburg Review Daily. Although like on the big screen, Neumann and Redford both complement each other while keeping their own strengths and uniqueness,” said Eric Mika, President and Publisher of The Film Verdict. Deborah Young, Editor and Chief Critic of The Film Verdict said, “We are excited to attend the festival and provide our independent reviews from the festival to the international film community.
