The upcoming Venice Film Festival has picked three movies from directors steeped in controversy. Roman Polanski’s The Palace will play out-of-competition. Woody Allen’s Coup de Chance and Luc Besson’s Dogman will also be part in the 11-day cinematic event on the Lido, an island off mainland Venice. All three have been accused of sexual misconduct. This followed the #MeToo movement.
Admittedly, only Polanski has been formally charged. He was convicted of sexually molesting a teen girl and fled the US in 1978. Allen has never faced any and French courts have repeatedly dismissed abuse allegations against Besson in a case relating to an alleged assault of a Belgium actress.
However, their presence on the Lido is bound to spark debates especially on the social media. The Festival may not take notice of this.
In 2019, Venice premiered Polanski’s An Officer and A Spy in competition and it clinched the Jury Prize. At that point, Alberto Barbera, who heads the Festival, defended his action. “The Polanski case [has been] debated for 50 years. I don’t understand why one cannot distinguish between the responsibilities of the man and those of the artist,” he said. “Polanski is 90 years old, he is one of the few working masters, he made an extraordinary film… It may be the last film of his career, although I hope he does like De Oliveira, who made films until he was 105. I stand firmly among those who in the debate distinguish [between] the responsibility of the man and that of the artist.”
Barbera said Besson and Allen were never found formally guilty of any the charges slapped against them.
On Tuesday, July 25, Barbera announced the line-up in Rome. And it seemed that except for the opening movie Challengers – which had to be pulled out because of the current strike in Hollywood — there were no other causalties. The strike prevents any promotional activity by American talent.
The competition looks impressive. Bradley Cooper’s second directorial effort, Maestro will play at the Festival. David Fincher’s The Killer – another Netflix title like Maestro — will also be seen. Ava DuVernay will become the first African American woman to compete on the Lido with her new feature, Origin, which follows the true-life journey of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson in her quest to find the origins of injustice.
Also from Netflix, , El Conde from Chilean director Pablo Larraín (Spencer, Jackie), scored a competition slot. The genre-tinged title imagines Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet has survived as a vampire but, after 250 years living on evil he has decided to reform.
Yorgos Lanthimos, the Greek king of disturbing surrealism, who scored his biggest crossover hit in Venice with 2018’s The Favourite, returns to the Lido with Poor Things, a steampunk, rom-com period drama starring The Favourite‘s Emma Stone as a woman brought back to life by a 19th-century scientist. The film features an ensemble cast including Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Jerrod Carmichael and Margaret Qualley.
Also competing for the Golden Lion this year will be Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, a look at Priscilla Presley’s one-of-a-kind relationship with the King of Rock and Roll, based on Presley’s memoir Elvis and Me. Then there is Ferrari, a hot biopic of Italian race car driver legend Enzo Ferrari
Other competition titles include Michel Franco’s Memory featuring Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard and Io Capitano, a coming-of-age adventure drama focused on the refugee crisis from Italian art house maestro Matteo Garrone (Gomorrah). The drama about two young men — played by Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall — who leave Dakar, Senegal in search of a better life in Europe, arrives just as Italy, and the rest of the EU, debate new laws to regulate asylum seekers, making the film particularly timely and appealing for a Venice bow. Fellow Italian, Stefano Sollima, also secured a Venice competition slot with Adagio, featuring Italian stars Favino and Toni Servillo.
The full line-up for the 2023 Venice International Film Festival is below.
Competition:
Comandante, dir: Edoardo de Angelis (opening night film)
Adagio, dir: Stefano Sollima
La Bête, dir: Bertrand Bonello
DogMan, dir: Luc Besson
El Conde, dir: Pablo Larrain
Enea, dir: Pietro Castellitto
Evil Does Not Exist, Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Ferrari, dir: Michael Mann
Finalmente L’Alba, dir: Saverio Costanzo
The Green Border, dir: Agnieszka Holland
Holly, dir: Fien Troch
Hors-Saison, dir: Stéphane Brizé
Io Capitano, dir: Matteo Garrone
The Killer, dir: David Fincher
Lubo, dir: Giorgio Diritti
Maestro, dir: Bradley Cooper
Memory, dir: Michel Franco
Origin, dir: Ava DuVernay
Poor Things, dir: Yorgos Lanthimos
Priscilla, dir: Sofia Coppola
The Promised Land, dir: Nikolaj Arcel
Die Theorie Von Allem, dir: Timm Kroger
Woman Of, dirs: Malgorzata Szumowska, Michal Englert
Out of Competition
Fiction:
Aggro Dr1ft, dir: Harmony Korine
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, dir: William Friedkin
Coup de Chance, dir: Woody Allen
Daaaaaal!, dir: Quentin Dupieux
Hit Man, dir: Richard Linklater
L’Ordine del Tempo, dir: Liliana Cavani
The Palace, dir: Roman Polanski
The Penitent, dir: Luca Barbareschi
Snow Leopard, dir: Pema Tseden
Vivants, dir: Alix Delaporte
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, dir: Wes Anderson (short)
Short:
Welcome to Paradise, dir: Leonardo Di Costanzo
Non-Fiction:
Amor, dir: Virginia Eleuteri Serpieri
Enzo Jannacci Vengo Anch’io, dir: Giorgio Verdelli
Frente a Guernica (Version Integrale), dirs: Yervant Gianikian, Angela Ricci Lucchi
Hollywoodgate, dir: Ibrahim Nash’at
Menus Plaisirs – Les Troisgros, dir: Frederick Wiseman
Ryuichi Sakamoto Opus, dir: Neo Sora
Series
D’Argent et de Sang (episodes 1-12), dirs: Xavier Giannoli, Frederic Planchon
I Know Your Soul (episodes 1-2), dirs: Alen Drljevic, Nermin Hamzagic
Special Screening:
La Parte del Leone: Una Storia della Mostra, dirs: Baptiste Etchegary, Guiseppe Bucchi
Horizons:
En Attendant la Nuit, dir: Céline Rouzet
Behind the Mountains, dir: Mohamed Ben Attia
A Cielo Abierto, dirs: Mariana Arriaga, Santiago Arriaga
City of Wind, dir: Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir
Dormitory, dir: Nehir Tuna
El Paraiso, dir: Enrico Maria Artale
Explanation for Everything, dir: Gabor Reisz
The Featherweight, dir: Robert Kolodny
Gasoline Rainbow, dirs: Bill Ross, Turner Ross
Heartless, dirs: Nara Normande, Tiao
Hesitation Wound, dir: Selman Nacar
Housekeeping for Beginners, dir: Goran Stolevski
Invelle, dir: Simone Massi
Paradise Is Burning, dir: Mika Gustafson The Red Suitcase, dir: Fidel Devkota Shadow of Fire, dir: Shinya Tsukamoto
Una Sterminata Domenica, dir: Alain Perroni
Tatami, dirs: Guy Nattiv, Zar Amir Ebrahimi
Horizons Extra:
Bota Jone, dir: Luana Bajrami
Day of the Fight, dir: Jack Huston
Felicita, dir: Micaela Ramazzotti
Forever Forever, dir: Anna Buryachkova
L’Homme d’Argile, dir: Anais Tellenne
In the Land of Saints and Sinners, dir: Robert Lorenz
Pet Shop Boys, dir: Olmo Schnabel
Stolen, dir: Karan Tejpal
The Rescue, dir: Daniela Goggi
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